{"id":5838,"date":"2016-06-18T14:52:34","date_gmt":"2016-06-18T09:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5838"},"modified":"2026-07-17T21:53:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T16:23:07","slug":"mardaani-2-review-rani-mukherji-rape-punishment-rapists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=5838","title":{"rendered":"Mardaani 2 Review: The Rani Mukherji Movie Has a Myopic View of Rape and Punishment for Rapists"},"content":{"rendered":"\nI<\/span>n the last couple of years, if there is anything more frustrating than a Rani Mukherji film, it certainly is listening to Rani Mukherji promoting it. In an interview last year \u2013 right on the heels of the #MeToo reckoning in the country \u2013 Mukherji <\/span>stated<\/span><\/a> that women across all ages should learn martial arts to protect themselves from sexual harassment. Putting the onus on women to safeguard themselves from possible harm instead of holding men accountable for their behaviour, was the line of thought that the actress comfortably paraded as the solution to sexual violence. A year later \u2013 timed to her upcoming release, <\/span>Mardaani 2<\/span><\/i>, a rape-revenge saga \u2013 the actress seems to have slightly tweaked the contents of her \u201crape-solving\u201d kit. In an interview last week, she claimed that the message she wanted viewers \u2013 particularly women \u2013 to take away from the film was to use violence as a means of \u201cself-reliance and self-defence\u201d. Essentially now, the solution to sexual violence is just more violence.\n\nDirected by Gopi Muthran, <\/span>Mardaani 2<\/span><\/i>, the follow-up to Pradeep Sarkar\u2019s uneven <\/span>Mardaani<\/span><\/i> \u2013 basically a female spin on Rohit Shetty\u2019s morally righteous cop template \u2013 opens with a bunch of statistics about rape that paint a dismal state of the safety of women in the country. Thrown into the mix is an acknowledgement of the involvement of minors in innumerable cases of <\/span>sexual violence<\/span><\/a>. The amount of culpability that is legally accorded to juveniles accused of rape remains a thorny point of contention that comes without any easy answers, as evidenced in the judgement of the Dec 16 Delhi gang rape. At the outset, the makers of<\/span> Mardaani 2,<\/span><\/i> however, make it amply clear that this isn\u2019t the kind of film that is interested in doing justice to any of that complexity. Instead, the film\u2019s promotions involved hoardings plastered across the city that yelled, \u201cDoes the age of the rapist matter at all?\u201d \u2013 a line that is more of a statement rather than a question with conflicting answers.\n\n\"mardaani\n\n
\n

Yash Raj Films<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nMardaani 2<\/span><\/i> itself, is nothing more than just an excuse to ride on the overwhelming public rage against the inaction towards violence against women. It looks to satiate the dangerous demands of mob justice to such an extent that the film ends up romanticising it. For close to 105 minutes, <\/span>Mardaani 2<\/span><\/i> traces Police Superintendent Shivani Shivaji Roy\u2019s (<\/span>Mukherji<\/span><\/a> overacts) tireless, aggressive manhunt for a young serial rapist only for that climax sequence where she ends up violently beating him. There is nothing in the film\u2019s decision to tell a story about rape or the fallacies of justice beyond this dangerous exchange that seems to drive home one point: In cases of rape, taking the law in your hands \u2013 even if you are someone who wears the uniform \u2013 for the greater good is justified, necessary even.\n\n

Mardaani 2<\/em> itself, is nothing more than just an excuse to ride on the overwhelming public rage against the inaction towards violence against women.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nIt\u2019s an even sinister shade of the garden-variety endorsement of vigilante justice that Hindi films have continued to make a meal out of. If <\/span>Mom<\/span><\/i><\/a>, a film that has a mother take the law in her own hands to exact revenge from her daughter\u2019s rapist, depended on mining sympathy, then <\/span>Mardaani 2 <\/span><\/i>thrives on making a crime scene out of collective rage. Naturally, the sequences that feature actual rapes and murders are stacked with exploitative shots of mutilated bodies in various stages of nakedness and bloodied faces. These are played up, insensitively, everytime the occasion arises for the makers to remind the viewer that revenge \u2013 and specifically blood-curling violence \u2013 is the need of the hour.\n\nThe film\u2019s timing, which comes a few weeks after the <\/span>Telangana<\/span><\/a> police killed the four suspects accused for the violent rape and murder of the 26-year-old veterinary doctor in an encounter, makes its myopic view of rape and its punishment an even troubling affair. It\u2019s impossible to look at <\/span>Mardaani 2<\/span><\/i> as anything other than an endorsement of these events, one that is against sticking by the codes of civilised society. To that end, <\/span>Mardaani 2 <\/span><\/i>frequently mistakes revenge with punishment and justice with an unchecked display of power. In that sense, it is even more depolorable than boastful the tone-deafness of Rohit Shetty\u2019s <\/span>Simmba<\/span><\/i>.\n\nBy the end of <\/span>Mardaani 2<\/span><\/i>, one thing is clear: There is nothing worse than Rani Mukherji\u2019s \u201csolutions\u201d to combating sexual assault \u2013 whether on-screen or off-screen.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mardaani 2 is nothing more than just an excuse to ride on the overwhelming public rage against the inaction towards violence against women. 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