Baaghi: Tiger;s body is the works

Cast: Tiger Shroff, Shraddha Kapoor, Sudheer Babu, Paras Arora, Sunil Grover

Rated: 7/10

That’s the rating for Tiger Shroff, not the film so much. He has done all that’s impossible in this second film of his. For one, and most importantly, the chikna chamela has managed to grow a stubble; then, he has mastered the art of ultimate fluidity. His body is a jerkless spring which throws up smooth, graceful and incredible antics — like the film’s signature scene in which he is introduced as an icon of kalaripayattu, a martial artist standing upside down on one finger and a thumb. He looks amazing, almost unreal, all muscle rippling and a form of body art that we would all pay money to fawn over. He also fights with an agility that comes naturally only to a spinning cheetah. The fitness of his being, the absolutely chiselled frame, and the action sequences that he and his second-time director Sabbir Khan conjure up, hold much of this film in good stead.

Yes, Tiger Shroff is an amazing gym athlete, a peep into which he gives you with this high-intensity action drama pivoting as much on his timelessly spinning body as his relatively lean love story. The only thing static about Tiger are his emotions or, should we say, ability to emote. He tries hard but, I guess, it is easier for him to design his muscles and his body action more than tune up for the rigours of emoting.

But then, the film needs very little acting skills, so high on action it is, the second half almost constantly speaking through his muscle standing up alone and untiringly against all other musclemen of the world, incidentally cooped up in a 27-storey building in Bangkok.

While there is poetry in Tiger’s rippling body, it gets to be a tad boring to see him constantly spinning on his feet and fighting the baddies, mostly in a perpendicular stance.

Premised on the kidnapping of his estranged girlfriend by her fighting fit stalker, a murder most foul by an unscrupulous son, a betrayal engineered by the girl’s greedy father and a cross-country rescue operation triggered by a goodwill gesture for a voiceless kid whose origins we do not know anything about, the film is in actuality a showcase for Tiger Shroff’s extreme zone fitness sessions which few will rival and many will marvel.

Go for the body worship if nothing else, not Sunil (Gutthi) Grover who is too mean and wasted, not Shraddha Kapoor who is a side bar and not even south star Sudheer Babu whose villainy gives few moments to the film.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 1 May, 2016