Sathya 2 Movie Review {2/5}: Critic Review of Sathya 2 by Times of India

Story: Sathya (Sharwanand) moves to Hyderabad to redefine the underworld. Movie Review: For a couple of years now, reading Ram Gopal Varma’s pre-release interviews has been more enjoyable than watching his movies. Well, he just hasn’t had much luck with sequels has he? Be it Shiva 2, Phoonk 2, Bhoot Returns and the now iconic Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag all of them turned out to be a patch on their respective originals. Let’s just say the pattern continues with Sathya 2. Time is a cruel thief they say, RGV looks like a magician who’s lost his magic touch and even his best tricks have lost their charm. Or even aRockstar who’s forgotten how to strum that guitar. Worse even, may be his ideas aren’t as cool as they used to be about a decade or so ago. Leaving the rhetoric aside don’t know if there is any filmmaker around the world who did what RGV did – i.e. take all of his best movies and make caricatures out of them with their sequels. It still takes some doing that. If you are among those who enjoyed Sathya, you better stay away and hold on to the nice memories.We have this Sathya guy who moves to Hyderabad and finds work with a construction magnet. How he goes on to reinvent the non-existent mafia and turns it into something like a parallel government is the general line of the story. How he does it is well just too lame to merit any worthwhile mention. Shades of Businessman you’d think? At least Mahesh had cheesy lines like getting Mumbai to urinate (Remember Mumbai ko pishap karvane aaya hun). This movie doesn’t even have such lame ass humor going for it.You’ll realise besides the camera tricks nothing much has changed or evolved about his filmmaking. Except for a pretense of a technique there is hardly anything content or form wise that has changed in his storytelling. In this movie he’s relied on self delivered voiceover to convey the drama. The writing seems to have hit rock bottom. Earlier he had the likes of Gulzar or Anurag Kashyap working for him and it showed. His philosophising, we are afraid has lost that chuztapah of the old. There are just too many speeches punctuating the narrative. The characterisations have also got very hyper dramatic and singular.To be fair Sharwanand’s straightened hair take the spunk out of all that brooding intensity he brings to the character. His lines are insipid, and it all ends up looking very daft. The actress Anaika Soti sure has some sex appeal and that perhaps the most pasisa vasool aspect of the movie. Everything else about the movie is just too amateurish.Note: Watch it if you want to find out how badly Sathya could have gone wrong.