Cast: Saif Ali Khan, John Abraham, Deepika Padukone, Anil Kapoor Director: Abbas-Mustan Genre: Action, Thriller Rating: 2/5 Movie Reviewed At: PVR Cinemas, Udaipur

At one of the high octane moments in the movie, a resentful character says that, “Revenge is a dish best served cold”. Only if Race 2 would have been anything more than being cold, the end results would not have been so deadpan mediocre.

To one’s horror, it felt like the intermission marked the tipping point of the thinking hats of the director duo Abbas-Mustan.  After that, everything went bananas! Seriously, this is what the hype was for? All that glamour and booze and tactics led to this; an incredibly loud and trashy dose of entertainment? But mind you! The word used is ‘entertainment’.

Don’t get me wrong! By no means is Race 2 an utter disappointment. How can it be? It had two haughty hunks, three steaming darlings and plenty of cars and yachts and bikes and…Err, robbery, cage fighting, chasing sequences, exotic locations and countless other stuff on which money was flushed away. Pity on those minds; all a thriller needs is a taut script, not a tsunami of money! Profound, eh?

Somewhere at the end of the movie, you wish that writers had a wince of quirkiness or laid more emphasis on the storyline of Race 2. Sounds rough?  Read! After losing someone close to his heart, Ranveer (Saif Ali Khan) plans revenge against the mafia king Arman Malik (John Abraham) while concurrently losing his heart to his half-sister Aleena (Deepika Padukone).  Where does Omisha (Jacqueline Fernandez) fit in the frame?  Well, she is the sweetheart of Arman Malik with a bizarre fondness for the word ‘Kamina’!

And the party is not yet over as we have the fruit-guy, RD (Anil Kapoor) who readily pops the cherry of his nitwit assistant Cherry (Ameesha Patel) and swings off vile one-liners.

If only Saif Ali Khan had not saved the day, Race 2 would have crumbled long before the climax came. The glamour at some portions punched away the need for a basic plotline and the exotic sites spread over your eyes and sheath the illogicality of the entire affair. The females, plastic they may be, added such beauty on screen that somehow, somewhere, style thumped over substance with pride.  John Abraham in his evil-avatar was nothing short of menacing with his grimaces and winks smeared across the rich European backgrounds.

To cut the deal, if one says that Race 2 was pointless; trust me that would be an understatement. It was drenched in cluelessness with characters wearing suits that fitted their toned bodies as aptly as the hideous makeup of a clown in a circus. Race 2 was a castle of cards that fell on a single stroke of smart viewing!