The moment appears early in Ahmed Khan’s Baaghi 2, a spiritual sequel to Shroff’s 2016 hit Baaghi. Shroff is back as the character named Ronnie, but this time with a different back story and a different woman to rattle his id. Ronnie was a street fighter in the first movie, but in the new production, he is an Army commando posted in Kashmir.
The human shield scene is supposed to confirm Ronnie’s deep-seated patriotism and daring, one that comes with an inbuilt applause-meter. But in its tone-deafness and staggering lack of sensitivity to the reality of the April human rights violation, the sequence is of a piece with the rest of Baaghi 2, which recommends that when crime and corruption boil over in the civilian world, it is time for the men in olive to step in.
In the 2016 Telugu movie of which Baaghi 2 is an official remake, the hero was a civilian. In Ravikanth Perepu’s Kshanam, an investment banker is asked by his former girlfriend to investigate her five-year-old daughter’s kidnapping. The banker’s initial investigations indicate that the girl is a figment of his ex’s imagination. If she suffering from a psychotic breakdown, or is there a larger conspiracy at work? Kshanam coasts along despite its inherent preposterousness by creating twists for viewers in every other scene, reserving the biggest one for the climax.
Baaghi 2 mixes Kshanam with elements from Rambo: First Blood 2, the sequel to Sylvester Stallone’s 1982 action blockbuster First Blood. While Ronnie has been busy strapping a man to the bonnet of his Jeep, his former lover Neha (Disha Patani) has been dialling him furiously. It has been two months since Neha’s daughter Riya went missing, and she turns to her bulked-up ex for help.
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