Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout Movie Review: Good Performances Mark Average Thriller

April 18, 2024

195 5 minutes read

Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Manoj Bajpayee, Prachi Desai, Parul Gulati, Sahil Vaid, Vaquar Shaikh, Ankit Bhardwaj, Dinker Sharma, Shruti Bapna, Surbhi Rohra

Director: Aban Bharucha Deohans

Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout Review Out ( Photo Credit – Instagram )

What’s Good: The procedural part of a crime investigation is deftly shown. This includes how the police correlate observation and thought with evidence and forensic angles. The performances are more than competent and there is a tangible atmosphere in most of the film. I also liked the unexpected turns that come at periodic intervals and the way the villain’s unrepentant character is presented.

What’s Bad: The script not only meanders in places but, more importantly, incorporates silly gaffes and flaws that could have been completely eliminated by some basic thinking. The post-climactic sequence where the cops are discussing the case jars as everyone in the team are in a cheerful mode, which is insensitive and totally at variance with the seriousness of the case they have just solved.

Loo Break: Not really.

Watch or Not?: If you are a Silence fan (yes, there was a previous film with the same investigative officers) or a hardcore whodunit or investigative thriller fan, yes.

Language: Hindi (with more than a smattering of English!)

Available On: ZEE5

Runtime: 142 Minutes

User Rating:

The title Silence 2 is eminently unsuitable and irrelevant to the story, while The Night Own Bar Shootout would have been an ideal one instead, even if the name could have been simplified and made more relatable to the Indian audience.

Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout Review Out ( Photo Credit – ZEE5 / YouTube )

Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout Movie Review: Script Analysis

ACP Avinash Verma heads a Special Crime Unit (SCU), which is under the scanner as the powers above are wondering if it is useful or superfluous. Fresh from their last case, his unit is now sent to investigate a shootout in a Mumbai pub where multiple random people have been shot dead, including a politician’s PA.

There is pressure on the police commissioner (Manuj Bhaskar) by the politician, but a preliminary investigation with some forensic angles confirm that the arbitrary firing was to distract the cops from the main victim, a girl named Aazma Khan (Surbhi Rohra), who was an escort. The PA has nothing to do with the shootout.

As the investigation proceeds, Avinash and his team get some lucky breaks as well. Avinash’s colleague from Jaipur, Jaya Rawal (Shruti Bapna) calls him up for advice on a case in her town, and soon, by one of those coincidences that can only happen in Hindi films, a photograph of a dead woman that she sends to Avinash also surfaces in the Mumbai investigation!

A tangled tale emerges that includes a kinky foreigner, the flesh trade and human trafficking, a close friend of the late Aazma, Rizwan (Chetan Sharma), who is not all he claims to be, and her rich client, Rajeev (Padam Bhola) who is scared of his art collector wife (Parul Gulati).

En route, the script makes several gaffes, like the absurd question “Yeh kaam kiska hai (Whose work is this?)”, a line said by a character that is totally senseless in the context, but I will not give a spoiler here, cops searching for evidence without wearing gloves, and minor girls who have been rescued from the flesh trade crowding around a woman who is narrating not-so-palatable facts to the police that should have been revealed in the girls’ absence.

A very glaring flaw is the commissioner keeping on giving Avinash deadlines like “You have two days” and “You have three days” to prevent the disbanding of the SCU. Later, he tells Avinash that he can only afford to send two police officers (including Avinash) to investigate in Jaipur and they have “to manage their accommodation”(!!). But Avinash lands there with two colleagues, Sanjana (Prachi Desai) and Raj (Vaqaur Shaikh)!

As said before, all these were entirely preventable flaws and just mitigate the impact of a tight police procedural thriller.

Last but not the least, the title Silence 2 is eminently unsuitable and irrelevant to the story, while The Night Own Bar Shootout would have been an ideal one instead, even if the name could have been simplified and made more relatable to the Indian audience.

Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout Movie Review: Star Performance

Manoj Bajpayee has now mastered the art of underplaying roles and etches a sober yet ingenious detective well. His fans will love his performance, though to be strictly objective, there is nothing really distinguished or distinctive in his acting, apart from it being a reprise of a similar turn in the first Silence.

His team is well-enacted, with Prachi Desai giving a likeable impression as Sanjana, Sahil Vaid scoring as Amit, Vaquar Shaikh as Raj and Nimesh Balaji Shinde as Javed. Manuj Bhaskar has an erratic character but Shruti Bapna as Jaya is impactful.

The actors who actually score high are Dinker Sharma, who puts in a scene-stealing turn as Arjun Chauhan, Chetan Sharma as Rizwan, Surbhi Rohra as Aazma, Parul Gulati as the weird Aarti Singh, Padam Bhola as her husband Rajeev Singh and Neena Kulkarni in a sweet cameo as Amisha (Ishika Mandeep Gagneja)’s helpless grandmother. Amisha is a small but key character in the plot and Ishika makes a great impact in a role less than five minutes long.

Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout Review Out ( Photo Credit – ZEE5 / YouTube )

Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout Movie Review: Direction, Music

Aban Bharucha Deohans directs this sequel too (like Silence: Can You Hear It?) and needs to whet his script nuances better to score high. His craftsmanship is generally good as the plot explores multiple aspects of crime and his predilection for the unexpected is quite novel. However, all I want to ask here is whether a gay angle was really necessary yet (any number of ‘yets’!) again on an OTT product?

Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout Review Out ( Photo Credit – ZEE5 / YouTube )

The score by Gaurava Godkhindi remains unobtrusive (as background music must be) but there is a needless song that comes in precisely for a few seconds, which was so unnecessary, all told.

Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout Movie Review: The Last Word

As things stand, this is average fare, very likeable in parts, not very tight in other sections as thrillers should be, but a one-time visit would do no harm, as one does not have to leave home for this! Besides, if I have watched far better thrillers, I have also experienced many worse ones!

Two and a half stars!