‘Baaghi 4,’ directed by A Harsha, was released in theatres on 5th September and stars Tiger Shroff, Sanjay Dutt, Harnaaz Kaur Sandhu, and Sonam Bajwa.
A torture disguised as cinema
‘Baaghi 4’ easily qualifies as one of the worst cinematic experiences of the year. Forget suspension of disbelief—here, you’ll be begging for suspension of screening. It takes a convoluted plot, throws in juvenile performances, and serves it with the kind of loud background score that feels like a punishment for buying a ticket. Forget subtlety, forget logic; this one’s content with bludgeoning you into submission. At one point towards the climax, a henchman tells a chained Tiger Shroff, “Abhi to torture shuru hone waala hai.” If only the makers had inserted this warning at the beginning, it could have saved audiences the trauma of realising too late that the film itself is the torture. By the interval, the only question haunting viewers is not what happens to the characters, but why this film was ever made.
A plot that collapses on itself
On paper, the story pretends to juggle multiple layers. Ronnie (Tiger Shroff), a naval officer, survives a car crash and begins hallucinating about his girlfriend Alisha (Harnaaz Sandhu), convinced their tragic love story is real. His brother Jeetu (Shreyas Talpade) plays the rational voice, insisting it’s all in Ronnie’s head. This sets up a double track—Ronnie’s battle with his inner demons and his war against a criminal syndicate. Enter Prathistha (Sonam Bajwa), a prostitute with a heart of gold, and a tacked-on romance that feels like it was scribbled into the script during a coffee break. Running parallel is Chacko’s (Sanjay Dutt) revenge track after his fiancée Avantika is murdered, except even here the second half throws in a mystery twist that feels more like a gimmick than storytelling. The result: a plot that thinks it’s complex but collapses under its own weight.
Decked without direction
It’s obvious the makers were desperate to tick every box that defines the franchise—big fights, slow-motion entries, larger-than-life villains. In the process, they forgot the one box that matters: a coherent story. Shreyas Talpade gets reduced to a footnote in the plot, Saurabh Sachdeva turns up as a forgettable henchman, and Upendra Limaye stumbles through as the designated buffoon. At the centre of it all is Sanjay Dutt, trying to inject menace by laughing maniacally while keeping a lion as a pet—because why not? The shadow of ‘Animal’ hangs heavily over ‘Baaghi 4,’ but if the film had captured even a fraction of that raw energy, it could have avoided falling flat. Instead, what we get is a hollow spectacle dressed up as high-stakes drama.
Sub-par performances
Tiger Shroff tries hard to look sincere, but the screenplay betrays him at every turn. Watching him stumble through this film feels like watching Alice wander through Wonderland, confused about which door will finally lead him to a decent script. Sonam Bajwa, saddled with the cliché of a prostitute with a heart of gold, gets nothing substantial and ends up trading punches with Tiger in the pantry of a restaurant—because apparently that counts as character development. Sanjay Dutt, meanwhile, is reduced to looking menacing and laughing on cue, as though the director’s only instruction was, “Just be scary.” As for Harnaaz Sandhu, her turn as Alisha makes it abundantly clear that beauty pageants and acting are two very different competitions. Best to leave it at that.
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The weakest of the lot
‘Baaghi 4’ stands as the weakest link in the franchise, a film so devoid of ideas that it confuses noise with energy and chaos with action. The fight sequences are repetitive, the editing is jarring, and the overall impact is as forgettable as yesterday’s newsfeed. If this is what passes off as cutting-edge action cinema in 2025, then the future of the genre looks bleak. Worse, it exposes just how creatively bankrupt the franchise has become. Instead of raising the bar, it buries it six feet under. One can only hope that this is the last chapter. For now, ‘Baaghi 4’ isn’t just a bad film; it’s a cautionary tale of what happens when a franchise overstays its welcome.
Rating: 1/5
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