Commando 3
Starring Vidyut Jammwal, Gulshan Devaiah, Adah Sharma, Angira Dhar
Directed by Aditya Datt
The hero’s entry in this slick and taut anti-terror thriller is something else. In an akhada a young school girl is harassed by a wrestler( for the record he tugs at the girl’s skirt and tries to raise it…it’s not the film but the character who’s being salacious). Vidyut Jammwal crashes into the indecorous scene and, in his words, teaches the langoti how to respect the skirt.
Save your applause for later.
Jammwal never fakes it. The action scenes in Commando 3 are even more heart-in-the-mouth than the ones he performed in Part 1and Part 2. And this is really the most watchable of the Commando films, richly textured in its anti-terror passion, shot by cinematographer Mark Hamilton in gritty basic colours that never impinge on the febrile foreground.
Among all the action films of 2019, Commando 3 feels the most authentic. It brandishes a flavour of fertile rhetorics and impassioned stunts which are never gratuitous. The main conflict is between the commando-hero Karanveer(Jamwal) and a suave London based terrorist (played with restless elan by Gulshan Devaiah) who makes his young son watch his crimes of assassination so that the boy would grow up knowing why Islam needs to get violently assertive.
The boy refuses to believe in his Dad’s pretext for mayhem. There is a riveting mix of thrills and propaganda in the way the co-writers (Darius Yarmil, Junaid Wasi) spring up to confront our worst fears. No, the fear is not another bad anti-terror film. We already had two of them Saaho and War in a row this year. The worst fear that our godforsaken planet faces is the moral bankruptcy that sanctions killing in the name of religion.
Commando 3 confronts those fears headlong. In spite of an unconvincing Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai ending, it is an engaging cat-and-mouse game between Jamwal and Devaiah. Sadly Jamwal can’t act. But he sure makes up for it with his stunts. Watch him in a key motorbike chase and fight on top of garbage dumps in London…this chap is among the best action heroes in the world.
Devaiah as a cold ruthless killer-terrorist who strangles his wife in front of his little son is in fearfully credible form. He gives his jehadi character a long rope and then sits back to watch the character tie itself up in knots. Like all action films, this one too doesn’t know what to do with its women characters Adah Sharma (who has fun with her Hyderabadi accent whenever the script finds space for her) and the appealing Angira Dhar who throw in punches whenever the hero jumps into the battle zone.
Commando 3 doesn’t try to act ‘cool’ on the global issues of terrorism and separatism. But it is very clear in its abrogation of anarchy.
