SATYA 2 review

SATYA 2

Mammoth Media And Entertain­ment Pvt. Ltd. and LR Media Pvt. Ltd.’s Satya 2 (A) is a sequel of Satya. The underworld in Bombay has almost lost its hold on people, and Satya (Punit Singh Ratn) wants to exploit the situation. Hailing from a small town, Satya reaches Bombay and starts living with his friend, Naara (Amitriyaan), a struggling film producer on the lookout for finance for his first film.

Satya joins forces with builder Lahoti (Mahesh Thakur) and gives him and his accomplice, underworld don RK (Raj Premi), an idea worth millions to establish the fear of the underworld once again. The idea works and, therefore, Satya overnight becomes a hero in the eyes of Lahoti, RK and others in the underworld. Satya then unfolds his bigger plan. He sets up a company like any other manufacturing or trading company. He announces in his group that the company will sell fear and extort money from and/or kill the rich and famous people including businessmen and media barons. He also makes it very clear that the company will not have a face. In other words, the company would spread terror but no individual, including himself, would take responsibility for it in a bid to establish his supremacy. Satya feels, the undoing of the past dons was their trying to spread terror by connecting their name with the terror.

Satya’s company succeeds in unleashing terror and becomes a major embarrassment for the government. Ministers, businessmen, media persons and even top police officers are murdered by Satya’s company to establish its power. The police and the government are unable to nab anybody as no individual or individuals take responsibility for the crimes.

Does the police force succeed in nabbing Satya, the mastermind behind the company peddling fear? If so, how? If not, why not?

Radhika Anand’s story is full of holes and fails to create fear or terror in the minds of the audience. This is the biggest drawback of the film as it is about a company which has been formed with the purpose of making capital out of spreading fear and terror. Radhika Anand has penned a screenplay which is quite lifeless. For a film in which the underworld is shown to be rising almost from the ashes, it was of paramount importance that the audience felt chills down their spines as the drama unfolded but in this film, the viewer sits back disinterestedly, watching the proceedings without even a hint of fear. For, except for murders, there is nothing more happening. And the murders are shown to be so simply executed that the audience is far from scared. Besides, since most of the actors playing characters at the receving end are either newcomers or lesser-known actors, the impact of the terror of Satya and his company gets diluted even more. Had these characters been developed, even their lesser-known faces would have evoked sympathy but their characters are just not established.

The pace of the drama and the pace at which Satya speaks are so terribly slow that they test the audience’s patience. Obviously, the writers and the director may have kept the pace at which Satya speaks his dialogues easy in a bid to establish how cool the sinister youngster is but rather than that getting established, the drama appears slower than it actually is and it bores the audience to the core. Equally irritating is the low pitch in which Satya delivers his dialogues. In contrast, the couple of scenes in which he mouths his dialogues very loudly just don’t create any impact. Also, Satya tells the police that his company’s activities were better than those of the police because the company was helping the poor. This comment looks like a lie because the audience does not really understand whether Satya and his company were helping the poor and the needy or serving their own interests.

There is one more major defect in the screenplay. Simply by not giving the company a face, the writers have tried to establish that Satya has come up with a fool-proof formula to spread terror. But this cannot be digested by the public simply because it is aware of hundreds of criminal cases solved by the police with almost no hint about the criminal to begin with. What’s worse is that in the film too, the police at one point learns of the identity of Satya, the man behind the company. So, the viewer is left wondering what the big deal about having a faceless company was, in the first place. In other words, the very novelty of the drama is reduced to zero when the police crack the case and learn of Satya’s existence.

All in all, the story and screenplay are kiddish and achieve no purpose – they neither succeed in spreading fear among the viewers nor do they entertain the audience. Radhika Anand’s dialogues are ordinary.

Puneet Singh Ratn makes a confident but average debut. There’s nothing about his performance to make him stand out as the sinister character he portrays. In fact, his laidback style of acting and his slow and soft dialogue delivery come in the way of creating the right kind of impact. Anaika Soti is ordinary-looking but her acting, as Satya’s girlfriend, Chitra, is good. Aradhana Gupta does well in the role of Special. Amitriyaan also leaves a mark as Naara. Mahesh Thakur has his moments as Lahoti. Ashok Samarth is quite good in the role of Solomon but he gets very limited scope. Raj Premi is effectively menacing as RK. Mrunal Jain (as police officer Abhijeet), Priya Gamre (as Abhijeet’s wife) and Sunil Shah (as media baron Gurdeep Rajdesai) leave their marks. Kaushal Kapoor (as Puru­shottam), Amol Sherawat (as TK), Vijay Kaushik (as ACP Bharti), Yousuf Ayub (as Sanghi), Vikram Singh (as Anna), Jiten Mukhi (as Malhotra), Allauddin Khan (as Sudhir Mahajan), Rajneshkumar Punwani (as Bajaj), Mukesh Padhya (as Abhinav Mittal), K.K. Doda (in the role of Shyam Jeth­gilani), Ravi Braroo (as Gupta), Kamal Khan (as JCP Waghle), Mrunal Khanolkar (as Lahoti’s wife), Iqbal Dossani (as police commissioner P.N. Singh), Hitesh Rawal (as Sunil Chandani), Jagdish Kansara (as chief minister), Mousumi Roy (as woman with garland), Pramod Kumar (as minister) and the others are okay. Makarand Deshpande’s commentary is too long and intruding. The Hindi used for the commentary also has many errors.

Ram Gopal Varma is definitely not in form this time. His direction is far from impressive and not just because of the weak script. Music (Sanjeev-Darshan, Nitin Raikwar, Shree D. and Kary Arora) is routine and so are the lyrics (Kumaar, Nitin Raikwar, Moid Elhaam, Sonny Ravan, Shree D. and Kary Arora). Song picturisations, by Shabeena Khan, are ordinary. Shakti Karthick’s background music is not as effective as it ought to have been. Javed-Aejaz’s action and stunt scenes have no novelty. Vikash Saraf’s camerawork is good. Tarun Ahuja’s sets pass muster. Editing (by Jerin Jose and Prathap) is okay.

On the whole, Satya 2 is not at all a worthy sequel to Satya. At the box-office, it will fail to perform. It has taken a dull start and there are very bleak chances of box-office collections picking up anywhere.