Double iSmart Movie Review: A lewd, overbearing action vehicle

The much-awaited good vs evil action stand-off in Double iSmart arrives near the interval point, with Shankar (Ram Pothineni) and Big Bull (Sanjay Dutt) facing each other at a dockyard. It’s not an ordinary confrontation, though, as we realise there is an event from their past that connects the two. It’s a moment where Shankar could have emerged out of the conventional macho hero prototype, rising to a hero figure whose victory also signifies a personal, emotional triumph. Double iSmart, however, has no ambitions to be that film in any capacity.

There was a time when Puri Jagannadh was known for his grasp on the commercial cinema template, using all the potboiler elements and yet displaying a hold on drama. The latest Ram Pothineni starrer can boast of anything but that. Unfortunately, this time, the Pokkiri director doesn’t seem to be interested in drama at all; his film, a sequel to iSmart Shankar (2019), is rather complacent with its juvenile, rowdy humour and ‘heroism’ histrionics.

Director: Puri Jagannadh

Cast:Ram Pothineni, Kavya Thapar, Sanjay Dutt, Makarand Deshpande, Bani

To be fair, Double iSmart is clear about its intentions from the outset. After a brief flashback underscoring the mother-son aspect of the story, the film immediately lands in kitschy territory as Sanjay Dutt’s character wipes off a Chinese mafia in London, but not before cracking a couple of jokes about fried rice and kung fu. As much as we want to hold on to the former, it’s the crude energy of the latter that the film chooses to carry.

Like the first part of the franchise, Double iSmart too uses the element of sci-fi (memory transfer, to be specific) for its story. Believability is not a key element here, and the film is quite clear in its tone. Unfortunately, the film is also brash and unbridled in its misogynistic humour, which leaves a terribly bad taste in the mouth. It panders unabashedly to the young male incel audience and has no qualms about playing to the sexually deprived gallery. The dialogues are crude, the visuals are suggestive, and it feels like a never-ending cycle.

There are relentless jokes about women as sexual conquests. When a villain’s associate introduces herself (her name is Bentley), the hero replies, ‘the same kind rich men like to ride?’ A moment of combat unnecessarily turns into a sexually suggestive encounter, just because the filmmaker couldn’t resist the gaze. Jannat (Kavya Thapar), the female protagonist, is compared to everything from a curvy fruit to milk solids. Even when the villain has to describe his distress, he reminisces how he couldn’t perform last night, despite having 10 call girls at his disposal. At one point, the hero compares a couple of passersby women to unhealthy, processed food, saying he wants to try ‘organic,’ to which his sidekick suggests he try a ‘watermelon.’ If it reads icky, trust me, it’s much worse in execution. While playing a game of roulette, Shankar deliberately pronounces six as sex—because why not? It’s that low-hanging a fruit that the film is going for.

The first half is strung together with more than a handful of these jokes and plenty of focus on Kavya Thapar captured through discomforting, voyeuristic camera angles. Granted, Ram Pothineni and Kavya share interesting chemistry, particularly when matching their energy levels in the song sequences (Special mention to a thumping, catchy soundtrack by Mani Sharma)—yet, these song-and-dance bits remain transient distractions at best. There are brief passing moments where the actioner looks promising in delivering emotion. When Shankar first realises what Big Bull did to him, his immediate fear is of losing all memories of his mother. Similarly, when a ‘rebooted’ Shankar talks about seeing himself as both the prey and the predator, it’s a potent moment, capable of exploring the complexity of his situation—and yet, it just passes us by.

Story-wise, the film takes far too long to raise the stakes and, even when it does, it fails to capitalise on it as it inches towards the final act. There is also a half-baked track thrown in, about the bad guys instigating a civil war just so more guns could be sold among the malleable public. However, everytime the film tries to take itself seriously, it falls flat on its face, which is particularly evident in the climactic action sequence where the makers seem too desperate with their use of religious iconography. The writers also resort to using ‘the big twist’ device in the finale that changes our perception of the hero. But like in case of most recent Telugu films, it only comes off as reaching, especially because it undoes a lot of the emotional build-up created earlier about the protagonist’s motivations.

During the mandatory hero-establishing song ‘Steppa Maar’, there is a magnetic frame with Ram Pothineni smoking a cigarette, where its smokey reflection is caught in Ram’s shades. There is no doubt this Puri Jagannadh directorial is proud of its hyper-masculine swag, and honestly, there’s no harm in having a little campy fun with a film that’s purely interested in the adrenaline rush of it all. At the same time, Double iSmart is the kind of film that defines its masculine energy by how much it can ‘otherise’ the women in the film. Nothing else explains the archaic ‘comedy track’, which centres around a tribal man Boka (played by veteran comic Ali who should really be more selective of his project now) who lands up in the city, and wreaks havoc with his primal behaviour (which includes seducing city-girls with tantrik sex moves). Seeing this entire track unfold just renders you numb. It makes you wonder whether the makers were even aware of its problems while writing or shooting these bits. Of course that’s the point of a sidetrack—to not necessarily contribute to the main story. But watching those lewd ‘comic’ scenes unfold with such frequency also makes you concerned about the thought process of the writing team. 

It’s a take-it-or-leave-it energy that Puri Jagannadh displays here in Double iSmart. Well, I wish I could go back in time and leave it. Talk about a sci-fi invention that’s actually useful in life—somebody, please make it happen.