‘Ganapath’ Review: Is Impressive Action Enough To Replace a Story?

I wonder if the makers of Ganapath kept repeating plot points through expositions and flashbacks because they wanted us to be sure that the plot is as important as the set pieces. Because otherwise, I’m afraid we would forget. 

Set in a dystopian landscape, Ganapath opens with the story of how the rich and powerful keep everyone else outside the boundaries of their ‘Silver City’. In today’s world and political context, such a premise of the powerful hiding away the poor in an attempt to maintain their power is one rife with promise. There is place for commentary that goes beyond the one we’ve seen before – when films like Trishul, Neecha Nagar, or even Gully Boy look into the class divide, they are imbibed with a rage, a resistance. 

There is power in the way the story is told – here there’s a lone saviour, plastered across a large screen as the common folk hold their breath and wait for their messiah to save them. 

When the people are pushed out of the Silver City (that looks like the Hunger Games Capitol was drawn from memory), the fight for survival starts to result in them turning on each other. One man, a visionary in a sense, (played by Amitabh Bachchan) suggests they use this rage to create fighters in a hope that one will rise to stand up to the powers that be. This attempt for emancipation is sullied when the blue-eyed John The Englishman finds this fighters club and begins to recruit men from there to fight for him. 

However, his curator is a certified casanova Guddu (Tiger Shroff) who can predict how fighters will behave in a ring, punches harder when he is afraid, and is constantly surrounded by a barrage of women whose names neither he nor the film can remember. I don’t even want to get into the wigs or hair dye combinations that make an appearance often – most would’ve forced Effie Trinket into early retirement (that’s my last Hunger Games reference). 

But Guddu doesn’t know that he’s the ‘Ganapath’, the saviour those on the outskirts of the gaudy city are waiting for. On this hero’s journey, we come across Shiva (Rashin Rahman) and Jassi (Kriti Sanon), both incredible fighters who will help Guddu on his journey of self-actualisation. While Sanon gets some incredible action sequences of her own and is easily the most watchable part of this film, her character is soon relegated to the sidelines. 

I am not one to fault a fun training montage – this one, even though it is nothing new for or from Shroff - is fun if you like action set pieces. There is one particularly enjoyable bit where Guddu makes chai (I presume?) for Shiva while the latter tests his reflexes. 

The film’s biggest drawback, however, is the VFX. When the screen is filled with an establishing shot, you’re still willing to let the amateur work slide but then there’s the obvious use of the green screen where the characters look so woefully out of place in their environment that it borders on comical. A scene aimed to elicit grief concludes in what feels like a 2008 PC game. 

When it comes to action, Shroff is inimitable – he glides, swerves, and almost floats through the air. The fight choreography isn’t particularly upsetting even though the staging (with the neon banners flashing in the sky) feels juvenile. But I would find it hard to find a flaw in the way Shroff executes the scenes. When he is dancing or fighting, he’s mesmerising to look at – does gravity not act on him the way it does on us mortals? 

Beyond that though, his act is half-convincing – the accent feels forced and not much of the emotions his character is meant to convey translate. If he is grief stricken, we wouldn’t know; if he’s plotting something, it’s a secret to us all (and not intentionally). He does pull of the apathetic, charismatic villain vibe pretty well though.

By the time Tiger Shroff is in a dance number lip-syncing to nothing, you’re wondering where the slight premise that peeked through in the beginning went. The contrast of fighting for survival to fighting for greed, of people cheering for violence as they push others to the brink of poverty, all form a softly beating heart to the film. 

But with great premise comes the great responsibility of execution. Alas, other than director of photography Sudhakar Reddy Yakkanti, the technical execution is nothing to write home about (unless you're writing to an agony aunt).