Movie review

Genre: Action

Starring: Emraan Hashmi, Disha Patani, Shabana Azmi

‘You have felt his pain… Now feel his rage’ says the movie trailer of Awarapan 2. You instantly wonder if the phrase ‘revenge and redemption’ sums up this action flick. And when you leave the theatre, dodging popcorn strewn on the carpeted stairs, you realise that you were, indeed, right.

Hitting cinemas two decades after the first edition of Awarapan – an uncredited remake of the South Korean film ‘A Bittersweet life’, directed by Mohit Suri (remember him as the soul of ‘Saiyaara’ last year), Awarapan 2 brings back the travails of gangster Shivam Pandit (Emraan Hashmi) whose path ahead demands redemption, love, and sacrifice.

This film arrives with an unenviable task – to continue a story whose emotional ending already felt definitive. The sequel, directed by Nitin Kakkar, brings Shivam back into the criminal underworld. The biggest difference, however, is scale and sensibility.

The first Awarapan was a compact, bleak crime drama built around one man’s moral awakening. Shivam’s assignment to guard Reema, the mistress of his gangster boss, gradually becomes a battle between loyalty and conscience. The film’s rawness, religious undertones and tragic romance gave it an unusually intimate emotional texture.

Awarapan 2, on the other hand, appears more interested in what happens after redemption – can a man who has escaped his past ever really escape the violence that created him? That potentially makes the sequel more mature, but also more conventional.

Emraan Hashmi is the sequel’s greatest asset. There is noticeably more lived-in weight to Hashmi’s screen presence – he no longer has to prove that he can act; the challenge is to make an older Shivam feel like the same man rather than simply an older version of the actor.

The female dynamic is also substantially different. The original had Mrinalini Sharma’s Reema at the emotional centre of Shivam’s transformation, while Shriya Saran’s Aliya represented the possibility of a life beyond violence. Awarapan 2 instead pairs Hashmi with Disha Patani, giving the sequel a new romantic equation rather than simply resurrecting the old one.

Visually, the sequel appears more polished and contemporary, with cinematographer Vishnu Rao replacing Raaj Chakravarti. Yet this is one department where Awarapan may retain the advantage. Its rough-edged, atmospheric imagery suited Shivam’s spiritual and psychological loneliness. The sequel looks bigger while the original felt darker.

Music may be the toughest battle. Pritam’s 2007 soundtrack became inseparable from the film, particularly ‘To Phir Aao’ and ‘Tera Mera Rishta’. Awarapan 2 wisely retains that musical DNA, with recreated versions and new compositions from names including Amaal Mallik, Mithoon and Jeet Gannguli.

As for direction, Suri surely did a better job – he understood that Awarapan was not a gangster film, rather the story about a spiritually homeless man. Kakkar, however, seems to rely on giving the sequel more scale to make a better impact…but doesn’t quite succeed.

(Reviewed by Hubert Vaz)

Verdict: ★★★☆☆