Before watching Sadak 2, I watched Sadak once more to renew the memory. It was of course a hit back in 1991 but what if it had released today? One would have said Prashant Narayanan as a villain from the Bhatt camp did a way, way better job in Murder 2 than Sadashiv Amrapurkar. That’s my opinion. But not only did the role of Maharani (played by Amrapurkar) sell back in the 90s, the couple was even a hit.
Today, when the clean print of the old movie popped up in parts in its sequel, one thing that I felt good about was the work of restoration into the digital version. And of course a good black and white portrait of Pooja Bhatt in Sanjay Dutt’s (Ravi, the taxi driver) room and in his Audi. Good photography, I must appreciate it.
Now let’s do a preliminary autopsy of what director daddy did for his daughters.
1. He loves Pooja more than Alia. How? He knew it would be the worst film of his career. He kept her only in references, photos, dialogues and memories.
2. Director Saab envied the character of Jishu Sengupta (Yogesh Desai) so much that he in real life became the villain of his younger daughter’s career.
The repeat star cast
If half of the star cast — run over by “nepotism” — from a flop movie (Kalank) comes together in a headless and dying story, coupled with bad direction (on par with Ram Gopal Varma’s Aag), no “Malang” or a “Musafir” would like to travel on this “Highway”!
The story now, a bit: A girl, Arya, leaves home because she knows her maasi killed her mother and is now married to her father. Both her parents follow a dhongi baba and she wants to reveal the truth and conspiracy behind the murder of her mother. She starts an online campaign to unmask these fake godmen. She manages to get quite many followers and also a lover, Aditya Roy Kapur (Vishal) who has a history and also a plan. She hires Ravi for her Kailash Yatra and history is mutually shared in the geographical exploration.
Forget about the storyline or direction or even the star cast, from factual errors to incomplete back story, Sadak 2 can easily be said “the worst so far this year”.
The same old nagging tunes of Ankit Tiwari, predictable dialogues and weakest of the lot, its screenplay, take you nowhere.
If you loved, sorry hated, Chunky Pandey in Begum Jaan, Jishu was the one who viewers had hated more in its original version Rajkahini. He repeats! Powerful, impactful, composed with an evil stare, he is perhaps the one who stands out in the entire movie. Priyanka Bose (who recently did a fabulous job but overshadowed by Adil Hussain in Pareeksha) as the maasi-turned-mother, Nandini, is good only in one scene and then there was a line of good actors wasted. From Makrand Deshpande to Gulshan Grover and the trio in the lead, who are considered good actors, are just wasted.
Saransh: Director Mahesh Bhatt who had made beautiful and memorable movies leaves a Zakhm on his fans and perhaps wouldn’t like to put on the director’s hat anymore.
Rating: .5/5
