Baaghi 3 - Through It All... It Breathes
Thoughts On: Baaghi 3 (2020)
Terrorists kidnap the older brother of a young vigilante with a superhuman will.
Baaghi 3 was recently in cinemas. It is the third in a series of thematically linked films. Each of the Baaghi films, as the title suggests, are about rebellion. Baaghi 3 sees Tiger Shroff reconstruct a romantic hero that, instead of rescuing a beloved damsel in face of gangsters, vows to always protect his older brother as a vigilante. The reversal of convention here is at once ingenious and fated - in a warped and twisted way. The first Baaghi is inspired by, and then eventually rips off, The Raid. It re-works the skeletal plot, basic drama and epic orchestration of action and violence of The Raid into a multi-staged melodrama via romance. In such the key dramatic shift between The Raid and the original Baaghi is bound to the relationship motivating our main character. Baaghi replaces brotherhood with romance. Baaghi 3, however, doubles-back and appropriates that one element of The Raid that it excluded: brotherhood. Alas, where the original Baaghi's drama and character construction are undermined by its cheap remaking of The Raid in a final 20-minute sequence that pretty much ruins the general experience of the film, Baaghi 3 is a hefty mess of its own making. In such, it takes the brotherhood that sits under the spectacle of The Raid and centralises it, melodramatising the essence of brotherly connection as to generate some of the most intensely brilliant aphorisms of pure sentimentality.
The final result of Baaghi 3 was slightly surprising to me. The film, semiotically and symbolically, is a roller-coaster ride. So much of the run-time is dedicated to quasi-politically conscious commentary that finds itself rambling about terrorism and governmental responses to it. There are so many folds of mess to this that I dare not get into it. But, through all of this questionable and rather insane framing, there comes pneumatic meaning. The heart and end of Baaghi is in its absurdly sincere evocation of brotherly romance. For this, Baaghi 3 is not just enjoyable - it is a film you can't help but feel. This, of course, bears its technical issues. The choreography of action sequences never lends proper weight to the physical speculative reality within the frame. That is to say, everything seems beyond improbable and, often, fake. These issues aside, there remains a metric tonne worth of spectacle to gorge yourself on. And I think the choreographic downfalls of this are worth putting aside. Baaghi 3 does not care to modulate its melodrama with realism like a Marvel movie. In such, we are not required to first accept that Captain America and Hulk exist within certain fantastical confines. Cinema and narrative are enough. We live in another world without excuses. I visited this realm with a wide smile on my face and a beating chest. I highly recommend Baaghi 3 as a spectacle and melodrama.
