‘Ghayal Once Again’ – Sunny Deol’s film, beautiful, brutish and effective in parts…

February 6 2016

Full of car chases (plenty of cars are ‘harmed’ in the making), and stock violence, the brand that is Sunny Deol incites mixed reactions second time around…

by Suman Bhuchar

“Ghayal Once Again” is an action film that is a follow up to a 1990 film, “Ghayal” (Wounded) featuring Bollywood star Sunny Deol who has written and directed the sequel.

Deol, as any Bollywood film lover will know, is known more for his brawn and fighting abilities than anything else and his role as an amateur boxer in the original.

The role of Ajay Mehra in the original “Ghayal” earned him the Filmfare Best Actor Award and his first National Film Award. (The
film, directed by Raj Kumar Santoshi won seven Filmfare awards).

This sequel is set in 2015, and there are echoes of the original story just to get audiences familiarised with what’s happened to
our hero since he was last convicted of killing a baddie in 1990 (no spoilers here)!

Mehra, who’s served his time, is a tortured individual haunted by nightmares, and is popping pills provided by his beautiful
neurologist doctor, Rhea (Soha Ali Khan) to keep himself on the straight and narrow.

He runs a campaigning newspaper, whilst using unorthodox methods to deliver justice as and when needed. (The scene where they
kidnap a corrupt media baron was most disturbing).

The plot takes a while to get going and the city of Mumbai looks fantastic in all the aerial shots of the skyline and we see more
of it in this film (than I was able to see from the car seat on my recent visit).

Ravi Yadav’s cinematography is great and hugely seductive – the modernity of Mumbai with its malls, high rises, opulent flats is
sumptuously realised.

When the story finally gets going, it revolves around a rich businessman who runs the town with his slightly lunatic son, Kabir
(behaving like a dictator) who murders a former police cop and mentor of Mehra, Joe D’Souza (played by the very able Om Puri).

This has been accidently filmed by a blogger Zoya (Diana Khan), who together with her other teenage buddies decide to expose the
culprits who naturally want to keep the footage hidden.

There follows a series of car chases, explosions, fight sequences and all manner of over the top gratuitous violence that will
delight the fans of Sunny Deol, but did not help my nerves as just when you think it’s all over, in comes another twist to
convolute the plot even more and heap yet more car chases on us.

I am really curious to know how the filmmakers make the action sequences and how many cars were harmed in the making of this film,
and what happens to all the broken glass?

ACV rating: *** (out of five)
‘Ghayal’ is out on release now