Review: Baaghi Mixes Tiger’s Abs With Shraddha’s Inability to Act

With a love triangle, mindless action scenes and a poor storyline, ‘Bhaagi’ leaves audiences unimpressed.

Since The Quint never sent a rescue mission to save me, I had to suffer in silence this week’s new release Baaghi. “Baaghi” literally means a rebel and true to its name, it has vociferously rebelled against every rule of successful filmmaking. If the norm is to make a movie with a decent enough script or to have actors who can actually emote, they have rebelled to the best of their abilities.

I quickly understood what Baaghi really is. It is a PPT presentation on “Saving the Tiger”, showcasing Tiger Shroff’s heropanti.

Slide 1 is about his chiseled body. Slide 2 advertises his meticulously bronzed 6 pack abs and the rest simply focus on his impeccable fighting skills. Tiger Shroff never stops, never gets tired. Of course, we enjoy his lithe frame and swift movements initially, obviously, the Kalaripayattu is top class but how long can one tolerate mindless bond breaking while the vacuous plot puts us to sleep?

Every time it rains, Baaghi’s heroine turns mad. Like literally. Shraddha Kapoor’s character, Sia, starts hyperventilating, breaks into a dance in the middle of nowhere and talks to the falling drops of rain. (Yes, you read it right.) This aberration is considered to be very cute by the hero of the film Tiger Shroff and villain Sudheer Babu.

What follows is a very predictable love triangle with dialogues like “agar tumne Ramayan padhi hoti toh tumhe pata hota ki Sita kabhi Ravan ki nahi hoti” (If you had read the Ramayan, you would have known that Ravan never wins Sita’s heart) *deep sigh*

Martial Arts is the only constant from Kollam to Bangkok. The biggest problem is that director Sabbir Khan can’t decide if he wants to make an out and out action flick or a romantic one. Randomly inserted song sequences abruptly give way to more Kalaripayattu and the end result simply leaves us feeling numb. Sunil Grover plays Sia’s manipulative dad and while it is an extremely badly written character, he does manage to elicit a few laughs.

But at 139 mins, Baaghi is predictable, boring and quite stretched. Apart from the action sequences, there isn’t much to talk about. Tiger Shroff is brilliant when he has to make mincemeat of his opponents on screen, but what he now must do is find that acting gene in his body and exercise it to stunning effect. Till then, I suggest you wait for Baaghi to come on TV.

1.5 Quints is all that it gets!