Ghayal Once Again

Cast: Sunny Deol, Om Puri, Murli Sharma, Prachi Desai, Soha Ali Khan

Director: Rahul Rawail

Writer: Tigmanshu Dhulia

Plot: Four innocent youngsters face the wrath of one of the nation’s most powerful men when they voice their opinions about him. He threatens to destroy their lives and begins to harass them in every possible way. Only one man can help them – Ajay Mehra comes to their rescue and helps them to face their offender bravely.

Rating: 2/5 Stars (Two stars)

Star Cast: Sunny Deol, Soha Ali Khan, Om Puri, Tisca Chopra, Narendra Jha

Director: Sunny Deol

What’s Good: Ghayal sequel takes off from exactly where it let off. The flashbacks work well for connectivity. Action sequences are the soul of this film.

What’s Bad: Ajay Mehra is not as powerful as he was back then. His character lacks the aggression. It seems like the villain is a hero in this film. A tighter script would have worked well.

Loo Break: First half could be a better time!

Watch or Not?: If you are a big fan of Ghayal then let me warn you this is no where close to it. Unless you have nothing to do this weekend, watching Ghayal Once Again could be an option.

User Rating:

Ajay Mehra who was sentenced to a prison term for killing Balwantrai and his men in 1990 has served his jail term and owns a news channel named Satyakam now.

His nemesis Raj Bansal is now a big deal in Mumbai. He is the second Balwantrai who has political control. Raj has a druggie son Kabir whose anger and arrogance knows no bounds. In a fit of rage, Kabir kills a man and the evidence of this crime is captured in a video accidentally by four college students Zoya, Varun, Rohan, Anushka.

Will Ajay Mehra, who is the last hope of these four kids, save them from Bansal’s game of violence and power?

Ghayal Once Again Review: Script Analysis

Ghayal Once Again comes no where close to the original. We know it is not the 90s anymore but the least that we could have asked for in this sequel was a few good punchlines. Sadly, the film borrows only two characters Ajay Mehra and Joe D’Souza (Om Puri) and somehow both are not enough to save this film. The problem with the film is that it is trying to say too much but show too less. Apparently, the makers wanted to send across a message of women safety but well, it certainly didn’t look that way. A bunch of kids being tracked down at a mall by Bansal’s men, who hit them ruthlessly and the police don’t even intervene was kind of too hard to digest. Showing a man powerful is one thing but him controlling everything so openly is not justified. Also, whatever happened to the good old villain vs hero confrontation scenes, these skype meetings don’t have the desired effect.

Sadly, Ajay’s character too seems quite ‘thanda’ this time. We don’t see him going berserk, yelling at the top of his voice, challenging his opponents. In fact, in this story, it looks like Mehra is one step behind right from the start.

The story truly takes pace towards the end of the first half which is the chase sequence between Bansal’s men and the kids but post that it again goes into a slump.

Bansal’s security men are foreign mercenaries and they talk in weird accents. At one point, the hitman Troy even has a dialogue “Now I am going to kill you”. You can do nothing but laugh at the addition of such an element in the film. Now that’s smart dialogue writing!

The only powerful dialogue that Mehra cracks with a lot of intensity is “Agar hum sach ke saath hai toh jeetne tak haar nai maanni chahiye.”

P.S: Await an emotional twist towards the end!

Ghayal Once Again Review: Star Performance

Sunny Deol returns as Ajay Mehra after 25 years and well, he is not exactly the same. He is brilliant in the action scenes but the emotional ones are a complete turn off. Somehow there is a lot of emotional turmoil in Mehra’s character in this film and that does not suit Sunny much.

Soha Ali Khan plays Mehra’s psychiatrist and she churns out an average performance.

Narendra Jha plays the antagonist Raj Bansal and it is sad to see that a villain’s character is stripped down to just giving instructions to people, yelling around, making it a complete bore.

Tisca Chopra plays Bansal’s wife and she hardly has anything to contribute in that role.

The four newbies do a good job of playing idealistic college students.