Baby’ is an ideal vehicle for that times we are in: it provides a home-spun hero who allows himself to get hurt but is invincible, plus an enemy who's going to be the easiest to demonise. The film can be as simplistic as the title – Us vs Them, with no prizes for guessing who'll win. In a messy world, where each action might have an equal and opposite reaction, exactly what is the point of complexity?
We are made a luxuriously-bearded mullah (based, clearly, upon a few real-life types) whose eyeballs have flames in the individual, as well as a crowd of followers who look like they are ready for ‘jihad’. They raise blood-curdling slogans, and talk nasty about `Indiya’. The retaliatory measures undertaken by our hero are justified in the beginning. Can’t have hate-spewing terrorists who secret meeting place in countries-ringed-by-deserts-and-sand-dunes threatening our sovereign nation, are we able to?
So were meant to cheer if the skilled counter-espionage agent Ajay (Akshay Kumar) breaks bones and smashes faces, while a gruesome interrogation sets the scene. If they can bash our guys, were allowed to bash right back, with no hassle. Ajay and the band of merry men, the impossibly buff Daggubati, as well as the sulky computer expert Anupam Kher, cause some amusement since they race around Turkey and Nepal plus the Middle East, tracking the baddies. But the whole is familiar and far of it is tedious.
This is Akshay’s most credible performance in a very long time, and reminds us the actor he is able to be, when he isn't up-ending monkeys and dogs in films pretending to become comedies.The supporting cast is passed out a few diverting tics, that features a nice little turn by Ms Pannu because the girl that can give as effective as she gets.
But the niggling discomfort a result of the pandering to stereotypes ( along with the requisite nod to tokenism) colours our viewing. There’s also the reality that though this film looks always to become on the move, it frequently stalls. The result is a kind of frantic business which flatters to deceive : ‘Baby’, fronted by its fleet-footed hero regarding his brisk moustache and it is background-music-overlaid action, feels over it should.
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