Manoj Bajpayee delivers another measured performance
Writer-director Aban Bharucha Deohan significantly expands the canvas of crime in its sequel. Silence: Can you hear that?The slow-motion police procedure he built around a murder investigated by Assistant Commissioner of Police Avinash Verma and sleuths from the Mumbai Special Crime Unit (SCU). The killings in which the ACP was sacked from the Anti-Narcotics Bureau and given charge of the SCU were driven by personal motives. It was a heat of the moment reaction to an act of infidelity. The investigation takes place in an environment inhabited by an elderly judge, his daughter (now dead), his married bestie and a young politician with a skeleton in his closet. The sequel casts the net even wider.
Silence: Can you hear that? As expected Manoj Bajpayee had a show. He plays ACP Verma, an officer who is reluctant to leave anything to chance and, equally important, suppresses his own instincts (even if they clash with his boss’s wishes) with customary finesse. In Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar ShootoutManoj Bajpayee continues from where he left off and delivers another exceptionally measured performance. He holds the Zee5 film together. Some credit for what works Silence 2 Must be submitted for original introduction writing.
ACP Verma is tough as nails but his armor is not without its share both on the professional front and on the home front. Separated from his wife, he lives alone. He has moved on but his unseen daughter, far away in London, occupies a special place in his life.
Total immersion in his work as a crime-buster is the officer’s defense mechanism. His hard-pressed team has to keep pace. The crimes he investigates Silence 2 This is not a human trafficking racket but another murder case. Criminals are organized groups, not individuals. What complicates matters is that the suspected mastermind is a phantom, a person no one, even those who believe they are part of the network, have ever laid eyes on.
The act of unspeakable violence referred to in the title does not arise out of mere anger or enmity. There is more to the case than meets the eye. ACP Verma’s job is closed but no detail escapes his notice.
Silence 2 is somewhat diminished by the absence of an antagonist strong enough to keep the indomitable police officer on his toes and provoke the confusion that has plagued him in the past.
The film also lacks intense confrontations and explosive confrontations – remember the tension between the ACP and standoffish politicians in a hospital when the latter calls the police “bloody idiots”? – It gave the lead character and the actor playing the role a chance to sharpen the edges of the battle of rage he drew.
The prime suspect in Silence 2 A high-strung, Shakespeare-spouting theater actor (Dinkar Sharma) is described as “a cold-blooded, fully functioning sociopath” by ACP Verma. There are others. Among them are Aarti Singh (Parul Gulati), a shady industrialist, and her husband Rajeev (Padam Bhola). But none of them turn into disturbing horror figures.
If the film doesn’t lose its way even after red herrings and frozen trails are visible from miles away, it’s because of the intriguing process adopted by ACP Varma and his core team of three inspectors – Sanjana Bhatia (Prachi Desai), Amit Chauhan (Sahil). Vaid) and Raj Gupta (Bhakkar Sheikh) – serve to keep the audience invested in the quest
Silence 2Like its predecessor, a tough cop movie where the cops are tougher than your in-your-face combat. They are not as trigger-happy and glib as the cops usually are on the big screen. They are relatable because they come across as real people doing a real job at risk.
Despite the workload they carry, ACP Verma’s faithful trio would have been better served if the screenplay made room for their personal inner worlds. As things stand, they are secondary, if not peripheral, players. It goes to the credit of Prachi Desai, Sahil Vaid and Bhakar Sheikh that they still manage to make the most of the limited bandwidth they are given.
Several people, including a girl we see in an opening sequence that leaves a scar on her face, are killed in a late-night shootout in a Mumbai bar by an assailant whose face is hidden under a hoodie. ACP Verma and his team rush to the crime scene to collect evidence. The killer leaves enough clues but they don’t immediately add up.
ACP Verma, working for a system that extends him little through unsolicited help, has to rely only on his deductive abilities and the unwavering commitment of Sanjana, Amit and Raj. A laborious pursuit of them without flash and improvement. They stay rooted as the stakes rise higher.
At one point, the police commissioner issues an ultimatum to the ACP that he is facing for the first time – succeed or get ready to disband your unit for good. So once again the officer is in a race against time. Working with their backs to the wall, the investigators drift away and discover a world where lower-middle-class teenage girls from small towns are lured to Mumbai with the promise of well-paying jobs. It takes some work to figure out who is behind the crime and what it has to do with the bar shootout.
In a good, simple and old fashioned way, Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout Engaging and intriguing but hardly more than an episode of television CID.
Deohan’s writing is generally steady. But more than anything else, Silence 2 manages to sustain itself thanks to the complementary twists and turns that Manoj Bajpayee lends to the film. The control and coiled energy he exudes seems to seep into his co-stars’ performances.
if you like the silenceThere’s no reason why you shouldn’t dig in Silence 2too. It has everything from Murder Mystery 2021. Well, almost.
