Risk

Director: Vishram Sawant

Cast: Vinod Khanna, Randeep Hooda, Tanushree Dutta, Anant Jog, Seema Biswas

3.5/10

Someone needs to tell Vishram Sawant that there is life beyond the Mumbai underworld. His first film D was all about that. And his second film Risk is a reprise of the same theme. Obviously, Sawant gets a kick out of dipping into that seething pot of violence again and again — originality and inventiveness be damned. In fact, Risk soon degenerates into one long killing spree, where goons saunter in, get shot or knifed, gurgle some blood, do a nice little death rattle, and breathe their last. It can be quite hilarious if you find that sort of thing funny. But it’s pretty painful otherwise.

The story is familiar stuff — the unholy nexus between criminals, politicians and top cops and one honest policeman who battles them all. Sawant’s upright and trigger-happy policeman (Randeep Hooda) is quite obviously modelled on Daya Nayak, the Mumbai cop who became famous for the “encounters” in which he despatched scores of gangsters. But the director forgets that we’ve been there, seen that — in Shimit Amin’s Ab Tak Chhappan, which was also based on Daya Nayak’s exploits.

Randeep does manage to bring a certain cold efficiency to his character’s hard-jawed, take-no-prisoners style. (Thankfully, he doesn’t have to do the song-and-dance routine with oomph interest Tanushree Dutta.) But he is done in by a weak plot that offers no surprises at all. The only real surprise is the way a supposedly hardboiled ganglord (Vinod Khanna) is caught unawares by the extremely predictable turn of events. On the one hand, he is shown to be an to be an all-powerful super criminal who orchestrates his dealings and killings from thousands of miles away. And on the other, he seems strangely naive — unable to cotton on to the fact that he is being double-crossed.

Vinod Khanna’s acting doesn’t help matters either. There’s no hint of chill in his portrayal, no lurking sense of diabolical intent. Indeed, he looks too much like a genial paterfamilias to make the cut as a ruthless underworld don. As a comeback effort, this is lacklustre fare. For Vinod, at least, this is one risk that hasn’t paid off.

Shuma Raha