Heropanti 2
Synopsis:
Tiger Shroff is hanging upside down from a burning helicopter while firing a rocket launcher with his toes because why wouldn't he, and honestly this is just standard operating procedure for modern bollywood movies where physics went on permanent vacation years ago. Heropanti 2 drops you right into this absolute fever dream of logic-defying nonsense right away before even bothering to tell us who anyone is. Let's back up a second though. Tiger plays Babloo Ranaut, who is apparently this globally feared computer hacker slash elite secret agent or something, and he's got all these slick suits and does endless backflips because Tiger Shroff can literally never just walk normally through a room when he can spin off a wall instead. The whole plot kicks off because the main villain Laila, played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui doing the most unhinged theatrical laugh you've ever heard in your life, runs a worldwide cybercrime syndicate called Wire Operations. Laila wants to steal all the money from every citizen in India on one specific night, and he's using random thugs and henchmen like Rakesh Krushna Joshi's character to terrorize people while wearing really terrible sunglasses indoors. Babloo gets hired or somehow infiltrates this whole mess, and he also has to deal with his former lover Inayat, played by Tara Sutaria, though Kriti Sanon doesn't even star in this sequel despite people always getting confused, but whatever, Inayat spends half her time yelling at Babloo because she thinks he's a cold-hearted criminal who betrayed her. And then boom, we get a random high-energy dance number right in the middle of a literal hostage situation where nobody cares that guns are pointed at them because the beats drop and everyone has to break into synchronized choreography wearing neon jackets that hurt my eyes to look at. Seriously, who styled those background dancers? One guy in the third row is wearing this lime green fuzzy sweater that looks like it's growing mold, and I couldn't stop staring at it for the entire four minutes of the song while the plot completely ground to a halt. Then bang, we hit the interval block right as Laila captures Inayat and straps her to a digital time-bomb that counts down in glowing red comic-sans font. We all go get popcorn, and honestly, the interval comes as a massive relief because my brain was melting from all the explosions. Act two starts up and Babloo has a twin brother named Jolly because of course he does, because no action-packed masala romance is complete without a totally unnecessary twin plotline to complicate things. Jolly is basically a cowardly, goofy stand-up comedian type who gets kidnapped by mistake, and Tiger has to play both roles, which basically just means he wears a bad wig and talks in a slightly higher pitch when he's Jolly. Inayat gets even more confused when she keeps seeing Babloo and Jolly switch places, and honestly, the editing in these scenes is so choppy that I genuinely couldn't tell which brother was punching the bad guys halfway through. Stuff happens really fast and Laila's cyber lair gets exposed through some magic hacking where Babloo just types gibberish on a glowing keyboard for three seconds and bypasses global security protocols. Rakesh Krushna Joshi gets kicked off a roof in a five-second sequence that I almost missed because I was checking my phone, and honestly, that whole massive henchman subplot just vanishes into thin air without any explanation. Laila goes completely insane, screaming his lungs out in a glass-walled command center while alarms flash red and green. Babloo and Jolly finally team up, do a massive dual roundhouse kick directly into Laila's jaw, and the whole criminal empire collapses in a heap of shattered monitors. Babloo walks away in slow motion while things explode behind him, Inayat runs into his arms for a sweeping romantic embrace, and the movie just cuts to black abruptly without tying up any loose ends.
The sound mix during the opening five minutes of Heropanti 2 is genuinely baffling, clipping every single time Tiger Shroff yells a generic threat into a windsock that must have been duct-taped directly to the boom mic. If I'm honest, I have sat through worse audio errors at local repertory screenings hosted in damp church basements, but hearing a major studio release crackle like a cheap Bluetooth speaker in an empty parking garage still sets a certain mood that no amount of digital color grading can shake.
Director Ahmed Khan approaches the material with the manic energy of someone trying to win a bet about how many times a man can kick backward without touching the floor, staging conversation scenes as if they are prelude to a roundhouse even when the characters are discussing offshore bank accounts and international wire fraud. The screenplay by Rajat Arora feels like it was written on a napkin during a particularly turbulent flight, tossing around words like cyberspace and cyber-crimes with the vague, terrified enthusiasm of a distant relative trying to understand what you do for a living.
Tiger Shroff plays Babloo, a hacker with an jawline that could cut glass and zero discernible facial expressions for two and a half hours, moving through locations that look suspiciously like the same three hotel lobbies in London redecorated with different potted plants and varying numbers of security guards waiting to be drop-kicked through drywall. Kriti Sanon is nowhere to be found despite what some aggressively outdated internet metadata might suggest, leaving Nawazuddin Siddiqui to chew the scenery as Laila, a villain who laughs maniacally in mirrored rooms and wears velvet jackets that appear to have been sourced from a theatrical discount bin in 1998, though Rakesh Krushna Joshi pops up occasionally to look deeply concerned while holding a tablet that is clearly turned off.
There is a specific supporting actor in the hacker syndicate who is dubbed so poorly that his mouth movements finish a full second before the Hindi dialogue emerges from the center channel, and it is a small thing, but it bugged me every single time he tried to explain a firewall. Meanwhile, the cinematography by Kabir Lal consists largely of circular camera movements around actors standing completely still, creating the distinct sensation that the operator was strapped to a lazy Susan while someone off-camera yelled about framing.
The soundtrack by A.R. Rahman sounds like leftover stems from a commercial he scored in a hurry twenty years ago, recycled and layered under slow-motion sequences of Shroff walking away from explosions that have the dull, grey consistency of burnt porridge. Bollywood movies have long relied on star wattage to obscure narrative gaps that could swallow a small truck, yet even by those generous standards, the complete absence of logic here feels startling, recalling the kind of disjointed pacing that made Kick such an exhausting chore to sit through.
Themes of modern technological anxiety get tossed around whenever the plot stalls out, suggesting that humanity is losing its soul to screens and algorithms while the protagonist literally uses his bare fists to solve every single database error, which provides a kind of accidental comedy that keeps the room awake. Babloo talks about numbers and code with the deadpan delivery of a guy reciting the ingredients on a cereal box, never once convincing us that he has ever touched a keyboard that wasn't covered in prop dust.
The action choreography by Tim Man tries for that sleek, Hong Kong-style wirework but ends up looking like a local gym exhibition where everyone agreed beforehand to fall down very dramatically whenever someone waves a foot in their general direction, and the cuts come so fast during the close-quarters skirmishes that you can occasionally spot the crash mats sitting just out of bounds behind a filing cabinet. Hindi films have given us some genuinely inventive brawls over the decades, yet this particular brand of weightless CGI-heavy destruction feels less like fighting and more like a series of aggressive yoga poses interrupted by a fire alarm.
There is no grand statement being made about contemporary society or the Surveillance State, just an endless parade of men in suits flying backward through glass partitions that shatter with the tinny tinkle of cheap plastic ornaments, and the camera lingers on these destruction shots for just a beat too long every single time. Laila's motivation involves draining the world's bank accounts to create some sort of utopian digital playground, a plan so vague and cartoonish that even the henchmen look like they stopped listening halfway through the monologue.
We are left with a sprawling, incoherent mess that refuses to find a consistent tone, shifting wildly from a grim thriller about international terror to a brightly lit dance number set in what appears to be an abandoned car park with neon strip lighting taped to the pillars. It is loud, it is interminable, and it features a closing twenty minutes of dialogue about the nature of love and hacking that makes you wish the sound mix would just blow out entirely and put everyone out of their misery.