Race 2 (2013): Revisiting Baradwaj Rangan’s Review
While reviewing older articles for the MeroLog archive, I came across a 2013 entry concerning Race 2, the Bollywood action-thriller directed by Abbas-Mustan.
The film was released in January 2013 and formed the second installment in the Race film series. It featured Saif Ali Khan, John Abraham, Deepika Padukone, Jacqueline Fernandez, Anil Kapoor and other prominent actors of the period.
The original MeroLog entry referred specifically to film critic Baradwaj Rangan’s contemporary review, making the review itself the primary source for understanding how the film was assessed at the time.
I was able to locate and verify the original review on Rangan’s blog. It was published on January 26, 2013, under the title “Race 2.”… On the glam.
A review with an unusual opening
Rangan’s review begins in a deliberately playful way. The opening initially appears to praise the film’s combination of style and suspense, but the review quickly reveals that this apparent enthusiasm is part of the critic’s tongue-in-cheek approach.
As the review progresses, Rangan becomes considerably more critical of the film’s storytelling, dialogue, characters and reliance on glamour and spectacle. He questions the relationship between the film’s elaborate visual presentation and its underlying narrative, suggesting that the movie’s appeal is heavily connected to its stars, luxurious settings and larger-than-life situations.
One of the recurring ideas in the review is that Race 2 often appears more interested in presenting attractive people, expensive locations, elaborate costumes and spectacular situations than in developing a compelling story.
Rangan also comments on the film’s plotting and its increasingly elaborate twists, treating some of the narrative developments with considerable humor and skepticism. His discussion of the characters and situations is deliberately exaggerated at times, which is part of the distinctive style of the review.
Why the review is interesting today
What makes this particular piece worth preserving in the MeroLog archive is not simply its opinion of Race 2. It provides a snapshot of how a major Bollywood release was being discussed by a prominent film critic immediately after its release.
The review also demonstrates how film criticism can go beyond a simple “good” or “bad” verdict. Rangan uses humor, irony and close observation to discuss the film’s visual style, performances, dialogue, characters and storytelling.
The original article remains available on Rangan’s website, which means the source can be checked directly rather than relying on a secondary quotation or an archived summary.
Revisiting the original MeroLog entry
The older MeroLog material described Rangan’s assessment as largely critical. After checking the original review, that characterization is supported by the overall piece, although the review’s opening deliberately plays with the reader’s expectations before the more critical observations become clear.
This is an important distinction when recovering older content. A short description of a review can sometimes miss the tone or context of the original. In this case, simply describing the review as “negative” would not fully capture Rangan’s approach, because much of the writing is intentionally humorous and satirical.
For this reason, I am preserving the original source rather than attempting to reproduce the review itself.
What I learned from this entry
This entry is another example of why I want MeroLog to document the process of recovering and verifying older online content.
When an old post refers to an external article, the best approach is to locate the original source, establish its publication date and title, understand its actual context, and then summarize the relevant information in my own words.
In this case, the original review is still accessible, so there is no need to speculate about what the critic originally wrote. The source provides a reliable reference point for preserving the historical entry.
The original review can be read on Baradwaj Rangan’s website.