Ek Villain Returns movie review: A gory, boring chronicle of the persecution complex pervading the manosphere

Language: Hindi

Manosphere is a collective term for websites and other online spaces that promote misogyny and patriarchy. These forums are occupied by incels, MRAs, men who deem women and feminism so contemptible that they advocate a life free of both, and similar beings. It’s an enormously unnerving place filled with people wallowing in a very specific kind of persecution complex unique to members of dominant communities who are steeped in privilege.

Bhairav Purohit’s mind is a manosphere unto itself. In the limited universe of his thoughts, all women are manipulators who lure men into loving them so as to get the hapless fellows to foot their shopping bills, pay their hotel charges and be servile in various ways.

In the hands of a thoughtful filmmaker who is invested in this theme, Bhairav could be excellent material for an exposition on his bizarre sense of victimhood that, sadly, does indeed mirror a sizeable section of real-world men. In writer-director Mohit Suri’s hands, however, Bhairav is an excuse for just another blood-spattered, men-centric, clichéd Bollywood thriller. Suri and co-writer Aseem Arora pander to misogynists yet disguise their script in good intentions. The film’s distorted politics is overshadowed though by its yawn- inducing execution.

Bhairav is one of the central figures in Ek Villain Returns, a spiritual sequel of sorts to Suri’s 2014 blockbuster Ek Villain that starred Shraddha Kapoor, Sidharth Malhotra and Riteish Deshmukh. That film, despite its multiple flaws, had quite a bit going for it. The most striking memory from Ek Villain Returns though is Arjun Kapoor’s lustrous hair and luscious, well-styled curls – I’m jealous and would like to know what conditioner you use, Mr Kapoor.

In this new film, Bhairav (played by John Abraham) matches wits and crosses swords with Gautam Mehra (Arjun Kapoor) who is the son of an industrialist. Bhairav is a taxi driver cum zoo staffer. The two men share space with the singer Aarvi Malhotra (Tara Sutaria) who is Gautam’s ex, and the woman who Bhairav loves, Rasika Mapuskar (Disha Patani).

Ek Villain Returns goes back and forth between flashbacks and the present so many times in the first half, that initially it takes some effort to figure out what’s going on.

Rasika is a salesperson in a clothing store. Bhairav feels used by her and starts noticing all around him, women who emotionally torture and financially exploit their paavam-bechara boyfriends. Meanwhile, Gautam is smarting from his girlfriend’s treachery and decides that he must punish such women. Later, he comes into contact with Aarvi.

The poorly structured screenplay is filled with one-liners designed to be crowd-pullers, such as Gautam’s motto: “Marna chalega, haarna nahin” (roughly: I’m willing to die, but never to lose). He lives by these words in his schemes against all and sundry, especially women.

As the trailer has revealed, a serial killer is targeting women who are the objects of ek-tarfa pyaar (one-sided love). Question: is the murderer Gautam or Bhairav or both or someone else?

The answer, and a twist in the tale in the end, are drowned out by a noisy soundtrack, crowded sound design and formulaic storytelling style that has been revisited ad nauseam since Anurag Basu scored a hit with Murder in 2004.

Ek Villain Returns is presented as a condemnation of misogyny, but the muddled writing of Rasika belies this purported theme. So does the ultimate battle between male saviours of women and male aggression in which women have no agency.

The film’s antagonism towards women can be seen not just in the way they’re characterised and objectified, but also by the manner in which they themselves are shown trivialising women.

Sample this. Aarvi’s manager gazes at a singing sensation on stage and says admiringly: “Look at how big she is.” Seconds earlier, the camera had rested dutifully on the said superstar’s bosom spilling out of her outfit, so we are left in no doubt of the double entendre at work here. Still, in case we are too stupid to get the crudeness, Aarvi grumbles that she herself is impressively proportioned, with these words: “She’s 36, I’m 34.” And wait … There’s more … Gautam shortly thereafter calls out to her: “Hey! 34! Not bad.”

Early in the film, there is also a staged assault scene that is played out with a comical tone.

As the narrative trundles along, Ek Villain Returns’ killer/s find/s increasingly more inventive and ghastly ways to finish off women, including running their bodies through a mechanised meat cleaver, elsewhere snuffing out a woman in a bear hug with bare hands. The camera even gives us a close-up of a chopped-up female body being carried in a bucket through a meat storage facility.

John Abraham barely alters his expression throughout Ek Villain Returns. His co-stars do the best that they can in the circumstances, but let’s be clear: the circumstances are pretty dismal.

The word “villain” comes up more than once in conversations in Ek Villain Returns to justify its use in the title and no doubt to appeal to viewers who fondly remember this film’s superhit foreparent. Neither such contrivances nor the repeat play given to Teri galiyaan, the chartbuster from Ek Villain, can compensate for Ek Villain Returns’ messy screenplay and messed-up direction. The film’s final scene hints at the possibility of a sequel. Aiyyo!

Rating: 0.5 ( out of 5 stars)

Ek Villain Returns is now in theatres

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial

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