After the success of their 2023 Durga Puja release Raktabeej, director duo Shiboprosad Mukherjee and Nandita Roy are back with the sequel this festive season. While the predecessor revolved around a plot to assassinate the president of India during Durga Puja festivities in his village, Raktabeej 2 goes beyond borders, unearthing a conspiracy to destabilise Bangladesh.
And pursuing the terrorists this time again is intelligence officer Pankaj Singha (Abir Chatterjee). Assisting him on the mission is West Bengal police officer Sanjukta Mitra (Mimi Chakraborty).
The story picks up the threads after the events of the 2023 film. Pankaj and Sanjukta had thwarted an attack on President Animesh Chakraborty (Victor Banerjee), and killed the mastermind of the assassination plot, Munir Alam (Debasish Mondal). The post credits scene had revealed a new terrorist (played by Ankush Hazra) taking on the mantle of Munir Alam.
In Raktabeej 2, the makers introduce Sultana Rahman (Seema Biswas), the prime minister of Bangladesh, who is facing backlash in her country from a section of the paramilitary forces. Protests by students and unemployed youth are on the rise. Amidst the turmoil, Animesh is scheduled to visit Dhaka for a diplomatic visit.
Accompanying him are Pankaj and Sanjukta, as they pursue a trail for a possible terror attack during Animesh’s visit.
Meanwhile, Ankush’s Sahil Chowdhary assumes the identity of Dr Ravi Shukla and joins the entourage as the caregiver for Animesh’s elder sister (played by Anashua Majumder).
Sounds thrilling? Unfortunately, the 152-minute long film is not. Shiboprosad and Nandita squander away the opportunity of a taut, and engaging crime thriller, and settle for a lite version of the myriad anti-terror web series we are by now accustomed to bingeing on OTT.
Unnecessary romantic subplots, songs that are a distraction, unwarranted melodrama and twists that are hardly shocking, are the biggest undoings of Raktabeej 2.
Sample this: Pankaj and his team are in the middle of a strategy meeting about nabbing dreaded criminals and the scene cuts to a song shot in Thailand as Sanjukta fantasises about her colleague.
Even the climax — a terror attack at a cricket stadium — is staged so comically that people in the audience were laughing, rather than gasping for breath. Let’s not even get into the rather immature take on the geopolitics of terrorism in South Asia — it has been reduced to a simplistic binary for the Bengali megaserial audience.
Thankfully, Abir carries the film on his shoulders, but the fatigue shows on his face in several action sequences. Mimi channelises her ‘Lady Singham’ aura in a few scenes but is reduced to a ‘heroine’ craving for her man.
In the end, it’s Ankush who emerges the tour-de-force of Raktabeej 2, killing off people with a straight face and wearing the countenance of an innocent doctor who saves lives.