Baaghi 4 Movie Review:

How should the fourth part of a Tiger Shroff action franchise begin? With some punches, somersaults or flying kicks, where Tiger would make a rousing entry over a soaring background score and slo-mo visuals. But that’s not to be. Baaghi 4 defies expectations before it can challenge physics. The film begins with a major jolt. There is no pretense of a build-up or an inciting incident. The first time we see Tiger’s Ronny is not through glorious staging and slick camerawork. He is just seen battling for life as his car is banged by a truck. There is no anticipation created for his entry as one would expect from a massy actioner like this. Instead, it is all too nonchalant, all too meh. Violent or not, one thing is clear: the film lacks any sense of rhythm from the get-go.

It takes off from the car incident which leaves Ronny in coma for seven months with brain damage. When he wakes up, all that he can think of is a name: Alisha (Harnaaz Sandhu). Everyone tells him that no one by that name exists and he is hallucinating. He is seen crying on her grave but later realises that it was someone else’s. He keeps looking at her photos on his phone but later finds them all deleted. Even a frame on the wall with their photo together gets replaced with his brother, Jeetu’s (Shreyas Talpade) picture. Ronny begins questioning reality as he continues to be consumed with the memories of Alisha. However, the psychological complexity ends before it can even take shape. Ronny’s fate seems similar to that of Sanjay Singhania from Ghajini (2008) but with a muddled twist, trading intensity with mindless screaming as he is stuck in a Black Mirror-like world with an emotional maturity of a Pogo cartoon.  

Director: A. Harshaa

Starring: Tiger Shroff, Sanjay Dutt, Harnaaz Sandhu, Shreyas Talpade, Sonam Bajwa, Upendra Limaye and Saurabh Sachdeva

When the film’s trailer came out, it was clear that it is taking a leap from its previous parts with the addition of gory and hyper-violent visuals. There was a beheading, a body being sliced in two and fingers being cut from a severed hand. None of it seemed to have made it to the final cut, courtesy of the censor board. It is apparent that the film is trying to cash-in on the crude show of violence which was apparent in Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal (2023). There is also the desperate presence of seasoned actors, Upendra Limaye, who is reduced to a punchline and Saurabh Sachdeva in a barely-there role of a negative character. 

Even the violent action scenes aren’t placed consistently. Much of the first half is spent watching Ronny erupt into intense bursts of anger as no one believes him. The action is largely reserved for the second half and even when it comes, the violence has no style or an emotional release. It is nowhere near the calculative and gut-wrenching Kill (2024), where a premeditated, claustrophobic atmosphere preceded the gory action. Baaghi 4 director A. Harsha’s idea of violence is showing Sanjay Dutt covered in blood. It is neither enthralling nor appealing to see Sanjay shouting his lung’s out as he goes on stabbing an already dead person. It doesn’t add on to the menace of his character but only leaves a bad churning in the stomach.

It is also particularly painful to witness how Sanjay Dutt has been cast in recent films. He is only looked at as an insane, inhumane villain. The actor does the same in Baaghi 4 with an even higher pitch as he is given a crude narrative arc of getting married to a girl in her twenties. In comparison to his limited screen-presence, Tiger gets to do a lot as he is practically in every frame. From dreamy flashbacks that seem to have been taken out of a breezy romance to the darker portions where he takes centerstage as a fighter. The actor seems more believable in the emotive scenes than the action sequences which run on auto-pilot. Even debutante Harnaaz doesn’t strike a chord in an inconsistent double-role. Sonam Bajwa has a crackling presence but is reduced to barely a few scenes with an underwritten character.

Baaghi 4 operates on a threadbare plot with repetitive scenes that lack finesse. It is the weakest film in the franchise due to its stretched, overlong screenplay which could have easily reached resolution under an hour. It is also the first film in the franchise that is not adapted from a South movie but is based on a story written by Sajid Nadiadwala. This is his second film as a writer-producer this year after Housefull 5, the cringe mystery-comedy which also operated on a scrappy idea filled with meaningless gags. Replace that with a lot of action and you get Baaghi 4. It’s a film that goes to flashback on a whim, turns into a music video when it wants to and ends up being unintentionally comical when its characters speak. A goon orders his henchman to torture a chained Ronny for 365-minutes and it feels oddly self-aware. While exiting the theatre, Ronny’s supposedly heroic dialogue was ringing in my head: “What’s torture for you is warm-up for me.” Sorry Ronny, we might not be that strong.