Review: Randeep Hooda steals the show in 'Jism 2'

Film: Jism 2 (A)
Director: Pooja Bhatt
Cast: Sunny Leone, Arunoday Singh, Randeep Hooda, Arif Zakharia
Rating: **

The posters whet the voyeur’s appetite. With flavour of the season Sunny Leone at the centre of all the action, Jism 2 announced an à la carte to suit every pervert’s taste. Surprisingly, there’s more to the film than just skin show — Leone’s lingerie and breathtaking Sri Lanka.

Porn star Izna (Leone) is trained to seduce and reduce men to mere helpless beings as she wields her beauty and boldness. One such Romeo is intelligence officer Ayan Thakur (Arunoday Singh), who also has a mission for Izna. She is the booby trap Ayan and his boss (Arif Zakaria) want to lay to retrieve important information from dreaded honest cop-turned-assassin Kabir Wilson (Randeep Hooda). But why would Izna agree to a mission that endangers her life? It is revealed that Kabir and Izna had a passionate love affair before Kabir abruptly left her without a trace. Apart from this being her chance to get back at Kabir, Izna is getting paid a fortune for the task.

Mahesh Bhatt’s script is fraught with holes bigger than Leone’s heels. Why are intelligence officers at Izna’s mercy? They know Kabir's whereabouts and that he lives without security, then why not capture him alive and extract the information they’re looking for? The IB claims that Kabir is losing his sanity. Why risk Izna’s life especially when Ayan is clearly in love with her? Never mind. For a thriller, the pace of Jism 2 is leisurely.

Director Pooja Bhatt has made every attempt to make Jism 2 visually appealing. Her frames and lighting add a glamourous touch to bedroom scenes that could clearly cross the line between aesthetic and crass. With Leone lounging around 95% of the film in racy lingerie, it becomes imperative that she is shot artistically. Nigam Bomzan’s cinematography captures Sri Lanka’s raw yet sophisticated beauty, while Leone enhances the visual appeal. The characters use flowery language, with references to nature, comparing one another with burning sand, soothing oceans and desert roses. Who talks like that? It sounds sweet but fake nonetheless.

Arko Pravo Mukherjee's music sets the tone for intimate encounters and keeps up with the dreamy pace till the end.

The opening scene and narration by Leone’s Izna is enough to heat the cinema hall up. But you reach a boiling point towards the climax. She slips and falls in every emotional encounter but is very effectively comfortable in her skin when going about her seduction routine. Even though her real life persona colours your vision of her, she manages to bring about certain sophistication to her character and the film. Arunoday Singh shows little improvement since Mirch, Aisha and Yeh Saali Zindagi. Arif Zakaria’s character doesn’t add much to the main storyline. The show stealer remains Randeep Hooda, who broods, shoots and makes love, in that order. He lends seriousness to an otherwise flimsy story of a porn star and her many rendezvous.

The uneven story and script notwithstanding, you could still catch Jism 2 since there’s no guarantee it’ll ever find its way to your television screen.