Police Story 2 (Telugu) Review

The last time we sent a fullhyd.com reviewer to a Thriller Manju film was in 2002. He has been untraceable since then (though we occasionally get missed calls from weird numbers). It's always a blow to an organization to lose talent. Fortunately for fullhyd.com our reviewers are not talented, but even we get senti when someone goes missing. Especially if he hasn't written his review.

It was, then, one of the most important decisions we have taken in a while to decide to review Police Story 2 for our beloved readers (the previous was reviewing Police Dog, where we did not know until the movie started that the title actually referred to a real dog in it). We took a snap poll in our office to decide who would review it. Nobody won, since all votes for our boss were declared invalid. Finally we decided to declare 2007 as Employee Turnover Year and send everyone to the movie. (One of us stayed outside since we needed someone to be able to drive us back.) Here, then, is the tale.

Like you've heard in all the promos, Agni Agni Agni is is is back back back (as everyone who's watched the original Police Story knows, Agni says all important dialogues thrice, very emotionally). Agni is now the DCP Crime. He can attack terrorist hide-outs, he can beat up hardened mafia dons, he can save innocent girls from being sold... the only thing he cannot do is shut up.

The movie starts with him making an enemy of Timmakka (Sana), a very powerful political godmother, by killing her son who has raped and murdered a college girl. Timmakka assembles a powerful army of underworld dons to wipe him out. They quickly realize his main sources of strength - the CM who respects his sincerity, the Commissioner who gives him a free rein, and his dialogue-writer who gives him long lines to say, whose completion they have to patiently await before trying to put a bullet in him.

They can rectify two of these, and they do - they get the CM removed and they get the Commissioner transferred. But nobody can stop Agni from talking. If you put a gun to his mother's head and ask him to surrender, he'll give you a 5-minute speech on how motherhood is the greatest gift to womankind, on how these days even mother's milk is getting adulterated, and perhaps on how our society is still stuck in the colonial mindset.

The second half of the film closely resembles a lousy movie. In addition to the fact the film has no cohesive script to speak of, there are random cuts, and huge gaps of logic. If you ever find yourself asking such simple questions like why Agni doesn't just shoot his enemies, or why they don't just shoot him, or why he is promoted instead of being suspended when his enemies get into power (no, there's no strategy there), then it means you are in a theater watching the movie after buying a ticket. Remember, for us it's a job - we don't have to worry about what people will think if they find out that we watched a movie like this. What is your excuse?

The script and screenplay of this one are the pits - you don't know just what they are trying to show. There are no professional production values, either. All that the film manages to do is convert Saikumar from a reasonably respected actor to someone who is meant to be spoofed, and almost make patriotism look embarrassing.

Yes, the original Police Story was a hit, but that was 10 years back, in a different context. This one just takes the good in that and overdoes it - rampant heavy-duty dialogues all over the place, with all the melodrama looking foolish several times - without thinking about all that the audiences have seen the last 10 years and what their tastes are like today.

The film has no heroine or songs, and it still takes about 150 minutes. That is the most valuable input in this review, since you need to stay till the end to figure that out. Okay, there's another more valuable input hidden in this review - stay away from this one.