In a scene from Gadar 2: The Katha Continues, Charanjeet, played by Utkarsh Sharma - the son of director Anil Sharma - tells a middle-aged Pakistani woman who helps him hide from a murderous Pakistani mob, “Main nahi chahta meri wajah se meri mausi par koi aanch aaye.” To the baffled countenance of a woman who has merely offered him safe shelter, in a hostile neighbouring country, Charanjeet suggests that his mother’s homeland is the obvious place to have found her benevolent, if unrelated, sister. It’s a doughy moment in the otherwise screeching, dry texture of a film that simply won’t whisper its ideas. Everything this film thinks, believes, or fantasizes about, it screams at you. It makes you wonder if this sequel to a landmark film from 20 years ago, could have been softer, maybe even accommodating of its leading man’s age, his shrivelled face and tired mannerisms. Instead, Gadar 2 is nothing but louder, and unruly to the point that it abandons the folksy charms of the original, in pursuit of something far more immodest and tellingly blunt.
We resume our story some years down the line from the events of the first film, on the cusp of the '71 war. Tara Singh (Sunny Deol) and Sakeena (Ameesha Patel) are now settled in shadow of the hills, with snow-capped mountains peeking over the backdrop of their dreamy domestication. Singh is still a truck driver, and father to Charanjeet, a notorious, college-going son who dreams of a career in cinema. His father instead, wants him to become an army officer. But before we are offered the warmth of this middle-class civility, we are first thrust, rather jarringly, into the orbit of Hamid Iqbal, a heinous, cigar-smoking general, out to ruthlessly avenge the death of the soldiers that died at Singh’s hand during the events of the first film. Played by Manish Wadhwa, Iqbal is clownishly amorphous, a man so plain yet superficially ebullient that his vocal cords and moustache, stand in for the entirety of his acting brief. Wadhwa, however, is not to blame here. It’s just that kind of film.
Singh is requested by the Indian Army to supply arms in the middle of a Pakistani incursion. He obviously does more than just deliver arms by picking up a gun, and casually swatting aside men like flies drunk on smoke. “Let’s play some war games,” Iqbal remarks at the sight of Singh, embroiled in a battle that he is neither qualified nor probably allowed to partake in. But logic isn’t what made the first film the exhilarating success it eventually became. Its most popular scene, after all, was the sight of Deol uprooting a hand-pump. Singh goes missing, thought captured by the Pakistani Army. To rescue him, his son decides to undertake the journey only someone as bold, and maybe as heady, as his father would. Like father, like son, so to speak. The youngster ends up in Pakistan, where he pretends to be a Khansama while winning the heart of the native Muskaan, played rather listlessly by Simrat Kaur (Deol’s daughter-in-law). The narrative from hereon in is an elaborate ruse to bring Tara Singh in direct confrontation with the risible general, so he can toss a few people around, hammer holes into their skulls, and singlehandedly upstage a nation.
Directed by the retuning Anil Sharma, Gadar 2 simply tries to rehash nostalgia for the first film, as a reason worthwhile enough to revisit the world that Tara Singh so violently, but also amicably, anchored two decades ago. The newcomers are found out, as malleable entities in a story so hungover with memories of the first film, it practically eats into their fragile performances. Sharma’s own son is given ample screen time, a half-decent glove to fit into, but is eventually drowned out by the tenor of a film that wants to never descend from the cacophonous high that Tara’s mythical strength and angst represent. Every time he walks on screen, looking a bit tired, bent at the hip, and visibly aged, he transports you to a time when his anger, his bloodshot eyes saved thin scripts created in jest, as opposed to contemplable politics. Not everyone from the first film, however, is allowed that kind of recall as Ameesha Patel spends more time with glycerine, tearfully waiting for one man, before she resumes her wait for another.
There are probably a million problems with Gadar’s deafening sense of border politics, of its use of religion as a provocative tool and its dizzying slaughter of the very craft of cinematic subtlety and control. Overlong, ballistic throughout, this sequel makes the original seem introspective, capable of reflecting on the machoism that a Tara Singh reluctantly turns to in times of civil anarchy. In this sequel, there is little time for politeness, as Deol is urged to howl is way through the entirety of the film. His eyes, their unmistakeable intensity, however, are still cinematic heritage. The intermission of this laborious sequel, in fact, is simply a shot of the camera gazing deep into them, the rage indistinguishable from the anguish. Notwithstanding what that feverish, ultra-violent idea of patriotism translates to, it’s predictably a popular sight. And so are other throwback elements – the scenes, the songs – as possibly the only likeable parts of a film that continues to elicit the loudest cheer at the sight of a lifeless hand-pump. A hand-pump that Deol’s ageing, but piercing eyes can still somewhat uproot to cathartic, if noisy, effect.
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