Cast: Rinzing Denzongpa, Malvika Raaj, Pooja Batra, Mohan Kapoor
Director: Nilesh Sahay
BLUF
Squad’s story is about the Indian Admin’s mission of securing an abducted cyborg kid, who is the key to a secret cyborg mission, formulated by an Indian scientist.
Squad stars Rinzing as Bhim, a National Emergency Response operative but, a resentful special agent, who is in perpetual mourning after a failed mission in Kashmir where he could not save the life of a little girl, who keeps appearing at intermittent intervals in the frame to guide him in his actions. Needless to say, it’s the ghost of the girl.
Malvika Raaj’s character Aria, also a special agent, along with a bunch of others, forms the so-called Squad with Bhim. The woman in charge is Pooja Batra as Nandani Rajput who leads the mission to bring the cyborg kid back to India. As they keep repeating Desh ki Beti. FML.
THE MEAT AND THE POTATOES
The Squad makers try to project Rinzing Denzongpa’s expression-less looks, stiffly spoken dialogues, and those muscles as some kind of a terminator experience.
He walks in and out of bomb zones and fires with the same aplomb as that of a robot who may break into an “I’ll be back” dialogue in between targeted missiles and bullets without a scratch to his attitude or brood.
The movie runs such sequences with or without choppers for most of its two-hour runtime.
Compared to our bigger action stars like Akshay Kumar, Hrithik, Tiger or Vidyut; Rinzing seems as if he just doesn’t want to make the effort. So you really cannot club him in the tried but failed zone like Krishan Kumar or Ekta’s brother.
Fortunately, he has meager talk to deliver in Squad because when he does get some, it seems like he is more cyborg than the Desh ki Beti.
Pooja Batra’s character is mostly expressionless but mouths most of the lines. Who said a powerful woman cliché must come across as irritable?
Malvika Raaj gets the obligatory item numbers, some sparkless necking and legs to show
If Malvika has been waiting for the perfect launch vehicle of her grown-up self ( she was young Poo in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum) , that moment just passed.
The plot is sketchy, but some action sequences have meat despite Rinzing sleepwalking through them.
Overall, a huge disappointment.
