Walking into Ek Villain Returns is like browsing an IKEA store. Everything is either wooden or plastic, be it Arjun Kapoor’s face, John Abraham’s abs, Disha Patani’s toothy laughter or Tara Sutaria’s dialogue delivery. It’s also a crash course on how to not make a film. For nothing in Ek Villain Returns — including its title — makes sense, with director Mohit Suri clearly making up feeble plot points and lame twists along the way.
Even if you don’t intend to watch Ek Villain Returns, any film in which Arjun Kapoor has more screen time than John Abraham is a no-no. John isn’t really Marlon Brando, but over the years, the man has at least built a ‘body’ of work. Here, John, oddly named Bhairav, is, for a large part of the film, a timid man being taken for a ride by the scheming object of his affections. Speaking of ride, John plays a cab driver who works part-time as a zoo keeper feeding a CGI tiger named ‘Hero’. Only a film like this could have thought that the same man would have the capability to do both.
But logic isn’t something that Ek Villain Returns comes with. Which is fine, but it doesn’t really deliver in the departments of entertainment and thrill either. In fact, how ridiculously bad the film is can be gauged pretty early. Within the first 20 minutes, Arjun Kapoor’s stinking rich bad boy gatecrashes an ex-girlfriend’s wedding kisses her and then dumps her, carries out a fake rape attempt and says, “Marna manzoor hain, haarna nahin” at least a dozen times. In fact, if I downed a shot every time Arjun’s Gautam lisped out this line in the film, I would be drunk till next February.
Like everything else, dialogues, penned by Mohit Suri and Aseem Arora, are not Ek Villain’s strength. Everyone speaks in hashtags, both metaphorically and literally. At one point, Tara Sutaria’s popstar-cum-influencer, who becomes an overnight sensation singing the worst song in the history of bad songs, proclaims she wants to wreak revenge on someone saying, “#Badla”. When she is told that her immediate rival is bigger than her in terms of name and fame, she pipes in with, “She’s 36, I am 34.”
When a man offers his subordinate a ride in his car, she says, “Toh aapki Mrs kahaan baithegi? Threesome not allowed!” If this film wasn’t such an excruciatingly painful watch, I would have fun spotting the meme fest that plays out over its 129 minutes.
Touted as a spiritual successor to the 2014 film Ek Villain, also directed by Suri, Ek Villain Returns has an interesting idea. That every person is both hero and villain, depending on scene and situation. It’s a premise worth digging into, but the film is so hare-brained and half-baked that it relies more on misogyny than mystery to build its thrill.
Ek Villain, with decent acts from Sidharth Malhotra and Shraddha Kapoor and a scene-stealing Riteish Deshmukh and aided by the haunting Galliyan, had its flaws, but was watchable. Returns casts a bunch of non-actors who seem to be living in a world quite divorced from reality.
Arjun’s character, sporting tattoos and a permanent sneer on his face, is Kabir Singh redux. Disha Patani attempts menace, but doesn’t have the acting chops to back it, while Tara Sutaria — coming off the back of another disaster called Heropanti — has precious little to do. John, mirroring the viewers’ emotions, looks either pained or confused through the film. The music — the handiwork of Ankit Tiwari, Tanishk Bagchi and Kaushik-Guddu — is an unmemorable mess.
Courtesy John’s turn as a cab driver, “rating dena mat bhulna,” is a line that’s often repeated in Ek Villain Returns. Having endured this film, all I can say is, “Guts!”
