Singham Again Movie Review: Peak Goofiness

Rohit Shetty dials up the maximalist action in Singham Again, the sixth installment of the Cop Universe, even if its story is thinly written.

As a mass spectacle, it’s tons of fun. However, as a political text, it has stood the test of time as one of the most important Bollywood films of the last decade.

This anti-corruption, anti-cop stance didn’t last long when Shetty moved away from Bajirao Singham and began introducing the figures of Sangram Bhalerao (Ranveer Singh) and Veer Sooryavanshi (Akshay Kumar) in the solo films Simmba and Sooryavanshi. One of them chronicles the journey of a corrupt police officer who begins to have a change of heart after a woman was directly assaulted by the people he’s in the pockets of. The other completely removes the political subtext that carried all movies in favor of a traditional “fight against terrorism” plot where the police triumph over all evil, even though the discussion around those figures is far more nuanced than this.

This was also the case for Indian Police Force, the Cop Universe’s television series where, in seven episodes, Officer Kabir Malik (Sidharth Malhotra) foils a terrorist plot that’s barely stitched together but contains lots of gratuitous scenes of senseless bomb attacks. As Shetty expands his universe, he’s seemingly forgotten why he made these movies in the first place and what he wanted to convey by constructing a mythical figure within Bajirao Singham, who is ‘born’ as the sun rises in the sky in the first movie’s opening scene.

Shetty now reunites with the character and hammers home the mythological subtext in Singham Again, the sixth installment in the Cop Universe. Throughout the movie, he and editor Bunty Nagi intercut moments of high-spirited, in-your-face action with Bajirao’s wife, Avni (Kareena Kapoor Khan), narrating the story of the Ramayana. Each instance of mythmaking parallels an event occurring in the present day, whether from the introduction of its main antagonist, Danger Lanka (Arjun Kapoor), or in the kidnapping of Avni as the film’s primary plot device.

Singham is now remythologized within the Ramayana, and Shetty goes so far as to posit him in the reincarnation of Hanuman during its climax. The results don’t work because the myth established in the first film felt tangible enough for us to believe in this cinematic universe’s heightened pulse of violence. In this world, the main protagonist steps on a guy doing a 360 in midair to slap someone else to oblivion. Singham being the reincarnation of a tiger seems far more plausible than another Hanuman/Rama story treated on screen, especially when Prasanth Varma’s Hanu-Man and potential cinematic universe dares treat the Ramayana on screen in ways that weren’t previously depicted in Indian cinema.

This mythological text is inserted in the film to mask the lack of a compelling story, where Singham pursues Danger in the wake of his wife’s kidnapping. Why does Danger do such an act? Well, it has to do with him wanting to exact revenge on the trio of cops who murdered his uncle at the end of Sooryavanshi. That’s about as far as Shetty goes, and it’s thus another battle between the good, corrupt-less cops of Singham, Simmba, and Sooryavanshi versus a terrorist hellbent on vengeance. Tiger Shroff and Deepika Padukone are joining the pack this time, making their Cop Universe debuts as Satya Bali and Shakti Shetty.

When first-look images of Padukone’s Shetty were revealed, it made it look as if she would play the polar opposite of Singham, a psychotic police officer of sorts hellbent on exacting any type of violence to exact justice on the criminals responsible for any form of heinous acts. And while her introduction scene certainly posits her in that vein, with Padukone’s Joker-like smile adding a darkly funny texture to the character, she’s completely sidelined for a chunk of the movie’s 144-minute-runtime in favor of hit-or-miss comedy with Singh’s Simmba (Padukone’s real-life husband, by the way).

Simmba isn’t a glorified cameo this time and has a significant role in getting Singham near Danger. But his direct sense of humor only works in small doses because he’s always in the audience’s face. If the comedy isn’t well-written (spoiler: it isn’t), he quickly becomes as grating as he did in Simmba. It doesn’t help that the jokes written here – by a sum total of six screenwriters and four dialogue writers – contain past-date boomer references (like trying to figure out what GOAT means) or constantly put Simmba in situations where he has to bamboozle antagonists through his relentless fast-talking. Sometimes, it can produce a chuckle or two, but it’s often not as hilarious as Shetty thinks they are.

Still, Singh makes the most of his screen time and shares the film’s best action scene with Devgn during a wedding reception. The comedic timing here is note-perfect, while Singham slapping a character to oblivion is finally being recontextualized as funny, as opposed to the self-serious way Shetty depicted him as such in the first two installments. This likely happened after the slapping scene in 2014’s Singham Returns, which became one of the biggest memes out of India and crossed over internationally (this is how I first heard of the character and the films themselves).

And as far as action is concerned, Shetty has seemingly found back the juice that made the first two installments of the Cop Universe so enthralling to watch. Literally playing with fire, he stages some of the most death-defying set pieces of the franchise so far, from a forest fight involving Shroff’s Bali to a bravura car chase that culminates in Shetty and Bali jumping above a helicopter to land on a boat container. Cinematographers Girish Kant and Raza Hussain Mehta embellish these acts of derring-do with elaborate slow-motion that lingers on a character’s most kickass moments. At the same time, Ravi Basrur’s score moves away from Amar Mohile’s leitmotivs which became an instant musical classic in India for a more propulsive affair where the audience will feel the music coming out of their bones rather than passively hearing it.

To some, it could be quite a jarring shift in tone. However, Basrur makes the most of his experience in the world of Prashanth Neel and delivers a surprisingly memorable musical palette inside the Cop Universe. It’s miles ahead of the terrible music from Indian Police Force and ultimately wins us over when it’s always in service of the action’s most entertaining moments, even if the classic Singham theme is ultimately missed.

Obviously, with this being set in the Cop Universe, Shetty teases the promise of more adventures by introducing another police officer (played by a veteran of Indian cinema) in a mid-credits scene. And even though I found Singham Again to be far more enjoyable than the previous three entries of the Cop Universe (Indian Police Force is truly one of the very worst productions I’ve seen out of India that made me think perhaps Shetty is done as a filmmaker), it still isn’t enough to save a dwindling cinematic universe that has sadly lost the potent political message it loudly and unabashedly stated in its first installment in favor of a gratuitous glorification of the police force in an endless fight against terrorism. 

From anti-cop to copganda is not the good look Shetty thinks it is, but it’s perhaps the only thing that’s ensuring he keeps making more of these. Dilute the political messaging and embrace jingoism. But everything that made this franchise worthwhile in its opening installments are now completely gone. Sooryavanshi and Indian Police Force were its biggest culprits, though Singham Again dials it down just a smidge for the action to feel somewhat engaging and the chemistry between the characters to pop off the screen. 

The chemistry between Padukone, Singh, Kumar, and an always-impassioned performance from Devgn keep the runtime flowing. However, the parallels to the Ramayana are haphazardly constructed, and the story itself felt far too undercooked for us to be fully invested in the proceedings. And while it’s certainly great to see Ajay Devgn finally lead a Cop Universe movie after appearing in cameos at the end of both Simmba and Sooryavanshi, one may think that perhaps it’s time for Shetty to move on to other projects that probably won’t focus on police officers and make something as excellent as Chennai Express again. But after making so much garbage for so long, is he willing to do it? From the looks of his newfound passion for cartoonishly goofy violence in Singham Again, perhaps a great movie is in his future after all.

Singham Again is now available to watch in select US & Canadian theaters and in UK & Irish cinemas.