Commando 2: The Black Money Trail

Released: March 2017(USA)

Director: Deven Bhojani

Not Rated

Run Time: 122 Minutes

Genre: Bollywood/Action

Distributor: Reliance Entertainment

Cast:
Vidyut Jammwal: Karanvir Dogra
Adah Sharma: Bhavna Reddy
Esha Gupta: Maria
Freddy Daruwala: Bhaktawar

I can honestly say that I have now seen movies from every populated continent on the planet: North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia.  Each continent and subsequent countries have a tendency to bring their own unique flavor to the film industry, especially when it comes to certain genres.  Action movies from China have a distinct look and feel and are very different from somewhere like France.  Obviously, Hollywood is the biggest film industry in the world, so the influence that Hollywood has had on other film industries around the world is incalculable.  There are certain countries in Asia that have recently really begun to churn out some pretty solid action flicks.  Thailand, Indonesia, the Phillipines, Cambodia, and Vietnam have been putting out some pretty solid flicks over the past decade.  One country that’s managed to surprise me a bit in the action film scene is…well….India.  I got my first taste of Bollywood action movies with films like Heropanti and Baaghi, starring Tiger Schroff.  Let me tell you:  Bollywood is an experience.  I just checked out another action film from India called Commando 2: The Black Money Trail.  Did India surprise me again?  Uh….yes….and no.

The film opens as special forces agent Karan infiltrates a criminal hideout to take down a notorious money launderer.  Finding out that the actual leader behind the scheme is in another country, Karan sets out to find the criminal known as Vicky and to locate the billions of rupees that were stolen.  Look, I’m not going to tell you that I’m some kind of expert on Bollywood movies or how they are made and what they entail.  My experience with Bollywood movies is very, very limited.  Three movies, in fact.  But I did manage to brave the strange and the bizarre that is Bollywood, and there’s a lot of interesting stuff happening there.  The aformentioned Heropanti and Baaghi films are indicative of that.  That being said, the story-telling and film-making standards in India are vastly different to their Western and Eastern counterparts.  It all comes down to cultural differences, of which there are many.  With that in mind, the story in Commando 2 is not very good.  I haven’t seen the first film, mostly because I can’t find it anywhere, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the 1985 Schwarzenegger film.  The problem here is that the story is not very engaging, and that’s most likely due to my lack of knowledge about what’s happening in India right now, outside of what’s being said in the mainstream media.  It also comes down to the writing, which, even by Bollywood standards, is not very good.  The twists and turns that are constantly being thrown at the audience make no sense whatsoever and the film is trying to be smarter and more clever than it really needs to be.  It’s okay for a story to be simplistic, and more often than not, that can engage the audience a lot more than something that is convoluted.  The complex story-telling here just doesn’t work, at least not for me.

The acting here is…..passable.  Again, the standards that I use to judge acting in other films kind of has to be adjusted a bit for Bollywood movies.  Vidyut Jammwal does a lot of mugging for the camera and really does nothing more than that outside of the action beats.  The ladies in the film are obviously very beautiful and do a very good job looking fantastic.  But that’s really about all they do.  I’m not necessarily faulting the actresses for that.  Again, the writing comes into play here.  Vidyut is a martial artist and stunt-man, so I can forgive him somewhat for being bland as an actor, but he does deliver some pretty good stunts and fights.  There’s a lot of gorgeous people here, just not a whole lot of substance.

The movie opens with what I consider to be the best action sequence in the entire film.  Vidyut’s character storms a criminal hideout taking down crooks left and right with his flips, kicks and gunshots.  It’s actually pretty good.  Some of the fight choreography isn’t half-bad, and some of the camerawork is pretty solid, as in we can see what’s going on.  Unfortunately, even with a solid action star like Mr. Jammwal, a lot of the later action sequences aren’t a whole lot of fun, because they feel very generic.  The director of the film is clearly inexperienced in making action films, because the majority of action is flat and mostly uninteresting.  The director is apparently a veteran of comedies and such, and it’s really obvious that he just doesn’t understand how action is supposed to work.  The final battle that takes place on a roof-top involves a surprising amount of wire-work, which bugs me, because most of the action in the film is wireless.  The stunts and the parkour sequences don’t use wires.  Also, the extreme use of slow-motion through-out these sequences just slow the movie down.  Slow-motion is a fantastic tool when you want to high-light a specific moment.  Here, it’s used way too much and is very distracting.

Ultimately, I can’t recommend this one, even to casual action or Bollywood fans.  It’s not very good.  The writing is terrible with some really half-baked performances.  I mean, there is no chemistry between the characters whatsoever.  A lot of the action sequences are very pedestrian, even by Bollywood standards, and the whole thing just feels uninspired.  While I was expecting musical numbers to show up during the film, as they tend to do in Bollywood films, the only musical sequence shows up in the end credits.  I think those would have spiced up the goings-on considerably.  Yeah, this isn’t a good one.  Skip it.  Check out Baaghi or Heropanti instead, if you want your Bollywood action fix.

My Final Recommendation: 3/10.