Baby Movie Review

PUBLISHED DATE : 23/Jan/2015

Baby Movie Review

Baby Movie Review - Decent Watch, Moderate entertainment

Ameet Bhuvan


There are two ways to look at Baby; for the film itself attempts to merge two genres that do not exactly go well together. On one hand Baby is a typical Bollywood action thriller falling comfortably in the Gadar zone with overt chest thumping jingoism and bravado superseding every sense of logic and reality. Holiday is the other recent example that comes to my mind in the same zone. 

 

On the other hand, Baby also attempts a Madras Cafe or Black Friday- splashing in references to real incidents and people to contextualize the proceedings. Unfortunately for the film, it does justice to neither of the two, ensuring the end result is passable action film that will not kill you. 

 

Akshay Kumar is an undercover cop who is out to rid the entire earth of bad guys plotting against India. He is a modern version of Gadar’s Sunny Deol- wears his love for the nation as a badge of honor, takes himself way too seriously and forgets that as a cop, a public servant, he is bound by certain rules and decorum. For him anything goes in his fight against terror. 

 

The terror itself too is over the top mashup of Arnab Goswami school of shouting and screaming. Muslims are the villains, though there is a token Muslim senior cop with the honest loyal heart, and another turn coat one who trains as a terrorist but has a change of heart. Cliches like these abound the script as the makers find no reason to flesh out characters and delve into the grayer areas. 

 

Akshay goes around ransacking homes, killing anyone remotely with a beard or a wink-eye expression when he should not and does not bother about collateral damages. Politicians are self serving morons out to loot the country and if it were not for our super cop the terrorist would have a field day. What Baby does is to amplify the fear mongering and irresponsible journalism news dishes out day in and day out and makes it into a celebration of unbriddled machismo. 

 

Akshay works well in a set up like this, his acting chops rusting, he relies heavily on his action man image. Which thankfully is still intact. He does make the film watchable to a large extent. What makes one cringe though is the unnecessary and half hearted treatment meted out to the politics at the heart of the film and the absolute insensitivity to the other narrative every terror story has.  A bevy of good actors like Danny, Sushant are wasted in thankless cardboard roles that do nothing more than deliver charged jingoistic lines to the camera. 

 

Watching Baby, if I dare say, reminds me also of American Sniper - propaganda masked as a feature film that instils a narrative espoused by mass media into the minds of unsuspecting audiences. American Sniper at least was slickly made. Baby however is just passable.

 

Rating: 2.5/5

User Comments