Movie Review – Force (2011)

Genelia D’Souza is the prettiest girl in the Hindi film industry but she has wrecked John Abraham’s chances of giving his career a boost. Genelia is so cute and delicate and girly that she wins big points with me instantly, but she’s in every other scene in Force, looking pretty and making John Abraham fall in love with her. Nobody in the audience will fall for it, though.

You go to watch an action movie feeling good that it doesn’t have that idiot Salman Khan or that bore Ajay Devgan, you think it’ll be a fun movie because it won’t have movie stars mouthing stupid lines for people who have come determined to clap and whistle till the movie’s over, you think you’ll actually be able to take the movie seriously because the story won’t be an attempt to make the superstar larger than cinema. Force is the movie you came to watch, but unfortunately, Force has no depth or substance. Force has John Abraham being stoic, Genelia D’Souza being childlike, a bunch of familiar faces hamming away, new villain Vidyut Jammwal making a mess of the shot he got, and badly shot action scenes.

The story? A police informer gives away the whereabouts of everyone who deals in drugs, causing the narcotics department (John Abraham and a few others) to wipe their businesses out. Turns out the informer had been asked to do that by Vishnu (Vidyut Jammwal), who wanted the narco team to eliminate his rivals so that his gang could become the only one around.

Vishnu jumps and runs like a strong animal, and this we see after his brother has been shot dead by the undercover cops during a drug bust. Vishnu wants revenge, and he wants the narcotics team and their loved ones dead. Vishnu’s one-dimensional performance would have been interesting had he not been stiff. Vishnu walks in and out of scenes with the same look and the same mood, occasionally putting up a fight with ACP Yashvardhan (John Abraham), who has fallen for Genelia’s beauty and has even danced in the desert with her. In a suit. And in strange clothing. Next to a piano. In the fucking desert.

Not that much is required from John Abraham. He’s in an action movie; all he needs to do is be dour and flex his muscles, because the chick will handle his dick. But John looks like he’s in great pain when he smiles. It’s a struggle for him. I really feel for the guy; he’s got this pumped up body and deserves a break. Force, which is a remake of a hit movie from the south, would’ve done it for him if director Nishikant Kamat had not had a female voice humming every time John looks at Genelia, and if there hadn’t been a song for every occasion, every 15 minutes. And the dialogues… Lord Satan, if you heard the banter exchange between John and Genelia you’d wish they’d just shut up and have sex. But I don’t think they get to fuck; Genelia falls in slow motion while dying and that stupid humming comes back on.

Something’s very wrong when an action movie doesn’t have you rooting for the hero or the villain, and something’s very wrong when an action movie doesn’t make us guys want to work out or learn a martial art.

With Genelia playing cushion, and all its other flaws, Force is impossible to get into.

RATING: 2/5