May the Force be with you

The trailer of ‘Force 2’ was released recently and it added curiosity in the avid Bollywood movie watchers including yours truly. In 48 hours, the trailer crossed 5 million views on YouTube. Achieving such impressive view count stands testimony to the brand value of this movie.

‘Force’ was released in 2011 and was a surprise winner. Probably John’s biggest solo hero hit, this is one effort that John Abraham probably must be very proud of. But, first things first ‘Force’ became a big hit for two reasons.

First, it had a very engrossing plot of “good vs bad”. A team of committed cops, lead by the rock solid and ruthless ACP Yashvardhan, are determined to rid Mumbai of the drug menace. What they underestimate is the determination of the bad guy’s team on the other side, who are also playing the game with a nothing to lose attitude. What then begins on screen in the original is a great game of cat and mouse.

‘Force’ was helmed by Nishikanth Kamath and while it had some over the top scenes like John lifting the bike and throwing it at the baddies, the difference was he made it look convincing. Probably, after Sunny Deol uprooting a hand pump, this one remains our most convincing impossible action scene in this decade. Kamath ensured ‘Force’ remains committed to its thrill value.

However, what brought real voltage, depth and speed to the plot and contributed to Force’s success was Vidyut Jamwal’s brilliant cold evil villain act. Vishnu played by Vidyut was a man you would not want to mess with. Vishnu is a man, who does not play by the rules and is a dangerous combination of muscle and shrewd brain, which he uses to put the entire police personnel in a shade of terror.

Vishnu was so real in his villainy zeal that you would never wish to meet him in real life and god forbid, be in his bad books. Unfortunately, for all of us since then Jamwal has moved on to become a good guy and let me tell you after Vinod and Shatrughan shifting their career as good guys from being bad, this is our best negative guy lost to goodness, on screen.

‘Force 2’, however, promises to be more than make up for the loss of Jamwal in some way though and I sincerely hope I am right because as written above Vishnu is a tough act to follow. First one is Tahir Raj Bhasin, this guy was another dark villain in ‘Mardaani’.

He carried his evil act in that one with such casual and earthy confidence that you could only go wow at that one. Unfortunately, ‘Mardaani’ did not do well at the box office as probably the audience was getting bored with Rani Mukherji playing an upright against the system woman, though she did put up a very sincere and confident act in this film. Tahir Raj Bhasin, however, left a huge impact and he promises to do the same with this one too.

The second one is Sonakshi Sinha as KK. This lady has a huge screen presence and showed us in ‘Akira’ that she can kick some bad guys too. The trailer gives us enough glimpses that KK and Yashvardhan could be great Male-Female buddy cops and in fleeting moments of the trailer you notice the chemistry between the two.

In that sense, Sonakshi’s KK is what Danny Glover was to Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon series. Since ‘Force 2’ is evolving as a franchise now this could be our next most looked forward to cop-pair in a long time. Something which was very recently attempted in ‘Dhishoom’, coincidentally by Nishikant Kamath the guy who helmed the first force but failed miserably due to a poor plot job.

‘Force 2’ has a huge audience mass practically counting days to November 18. Hope the end product is worth the wait. Right now all the indicators point to a smasher entertainer. Brace yourself!