Raid 2: A Gritty Sequel that Sharpens Its Blade on India’s Political Corruption

🎬 Raid 2 (2025)

Genre: Crime Thriller

Directed by: Raj Kumar Gupta

Starring: Ajay Devgn, Riteish Deshmukh, Vaani Kapoor, Kumud Mishra

Runtime: Approx. 140 minutes

Language: Hindi

Platform: Theatrical Release

Release Date: May 1, 2025

When Raid released in 2018, it was a rare triumph of substance over spectacle — a film that took an inherently uncinematic event (an income tax raid) and transformed it into a tightly-wound, edge-of-your-seat drama powered by principled idealism and political decay. Raid 2, releasing in a very different political and cinematic climate, attempts to carry forward that legacy. It succeeds in part, stumbles in others, but ultimately manages to deliver a gripping, sobering meditation on the nature of power, justice, and bureaucracy in India.

The Premise: A Bigger Raid, A Darker Enemy

Raid 2 picks up a few years after the events of the first film. Amay Patnaik (Ajay Devgn), now promoted and hardened, is no longer the wide-eyed officer we once knew. He's seen the system from within — its rot, its red tape, and its puppeteers. When he is tasked with a new assignment to investigate Dada Manohar Bhai (Riteish Deshmukh), a charismatic yet dangerous populist leader in Madhya Pradesh, the stakes are higher, murkier, and more politically explosive.

Dada is no ordinary tax evader — he’s a Robin Hood-like figure, a cult personality with deep grassroots support and unassailable media protection. He is also a ruthless manipulator who uses state machinery to silence dissent, hide assets, and rewrite narratives.

What begins as a seemingly straightforward investigation slowly morphs into a high-stakes political thriller, as Amay’s probe leads him to uncover a web of shell companies, hawala networks, benami properties, and even links to international smuggling rings. The line between criminal enterprise and political legitimacy blurs disturbingly.

🎭 Performances: Acting as Resistance

🔹 Ajay Devgn as Amay Patnaik

This is one of Devgn’s most measured and internalized performances in years. He resists the urge to go full action-hero, instead letting silence, stillness, and icy control define his character. In Raid 2, Amay isn’t a man fueled by righteousness anymore — he’s driven by grim duty, by a cold, nearly obsessive resolve to pull the edifice of corruption down, even if it crushes him.

Devgn’s strength lies in his eyes — haunted, calculating, determined. Whether it’s the scene where he silently stares down an army of political goons blocking his way into Dada’s ancestral home, or his quiet breakdown in a hotel room after a failed attempt to get clearance from Delhi, Devgn embodies the quiet tragedy of a man trying to hold onto ideals in an un-ideal world.

🔹 Riteish Deshmukh as Dada Manohar Bhai

This is the real revelation of the film. Riteish Deshmukh sheds all remnants of comic roles and delivers a chilling, cunning, and almost Shakespearean performance. Dada is not loud or flamboyant — he is soft-spoken, composed, and terrifyingly rational. He uses empathy as a weapon, charisma as a cloak, and legality as a shield.

In one brilliant scene, he walks through a slum, blessing people like a saint, even as a parallel montage shows his men blackmailing and buying off bureaucrats. His villainy lies in his normalcy. Deshmukh makes him both seductive and sinister, elevating the film’s central conflict to something far more psychological and moral.

🔹 Vaani Kapoor as Ranjana (Whistleblower & Journalist)

While her role isn’t central, Kapoor adds complexity to the narrative as a firebrand journalist who aids Amay’s investigation by leaking critical documents. Her character is modeled on real-life reporters who face threats and censorship daily. She’s competent, self-aware, and thankfully never reduced to a romantic subplot.

🔹 Kumud Mishra as the Senior IT Commissioner

A small but crucial role, Mishra plays Amay’s superior, caught between career safety and moral integrity. His subtle, layered performance — especially in a climactic sequence where he must approve the raid despite a phone call from the Home Minister — leaves a lasting impact.

🧠 Writing & Screenplay: A Maze of Truth and Power

Raj Kumar Gupta’s screenplay, co-written with Ritesh Shah, is more ambitious than the original. The first Raid was essentially a bottle drama — a singular raid at a singular mansion. Raid 2 expands its canvas significantly. We’re taken through multiple states, bureaucratic layers, political corridors, and media showrooms.

While this larger scale allows for a more holistic view of systemic corruption, it also introduces pacing issues in the first half. The screenplay spends considerable time setting up legal documents, investigative procedures, and secondary characters. But patience pays off.

The second half kicks into gear like a thriller — complete with tense sting operations, legal manipulation, and an exhilarating raid that spans multiple fronts: warehouses, offshore accounts, and even a secret underground vault beneath a temple (a controversial yet intelligently handled twist).

Dialogues are precise, restrained, and quietly biting. There are no heroic monologues. Instead, the power of words is used to expose how language itself is co-opted by the powerful to mask truth.

🎥 Cinematography & Editing: Shadows and Surveillance

Cinematographer Aseem Bajaj crafts a visual language steeped in contrast — sunlight filtering through dusty record rooms, overhead drone shots of labyrinthine slums, and haunting night sequences in bureaucratic offices. His camera is less showy and more investigative — always observing, sometimes intruding, often judging.

The use of surveillance camera footage and docu-style insertions (inspired by real-life press clips) adds a semi-documentary feel that grounds the film. Editors Bodhaditya Banerjee and Nitin Baid use intercuts, timelines, and sudden flashbacks to maintain urgency, especially in the latter half.

A standout sequence involves a raid that is conducted simultaneously at three different locations, cut together with surgical precision, echoing Soderbergh’s Traffic and even Argo in its tautness.

🎶 Music & Background Score: Minimal, Meaningful

Amit Trivedi’s background score is sparse but impactful. There are no unnecessary songs, barring one semi-classical track (“Satyam Shivam”) that plays during the climactic vault discovery — and it’s goosebump-inducing. The score mostly relies on brooding strings, pulsating percussion, and long silences.

It complements the tone — sombre, bureaucratic, and investigative. This isn’t a masala thriller. It’s a film that believes tension lies not in noise, but in truth, silence, and consequence.

🧩 Themes & Subtext: A Mirror to Contemporary India

More than just a story of a tax raid, Raid 2 is a reflection on India’s shifting political morality. It explores:

* The weaponization of populism: How public image protects the corrupt.

* Bureaucratic fear: How honest officers often fight battles alone.

* Legal grey zones: How shell companies and foreign assets escape scrutiny.

* Media control: How narratives are shaped, not reported.

* Religion as a smokescreen: How faith-based charity fronts are used to hide criminal wealth.

The film doesn’t name real politicians, but it nods enough for the viewer to feel unease. Gupta smartly never sensationalizes — he lets documents, dates, and numbers speak louder than slogans.

⚖️ Weaknesses: Overreach & Pacing

While Raid 2 is intelligent and absorbing, it falters in a few areas:

* First Half Drag: The build-up, while meticulous, could have been trimmed by 10-15 minutes without losing impact.

* Simplified Final Twist: A crucial last-minute revelation about a mole inside the IT department feels slightly underwritten and rushed.

* Underutilized Female Leads: While Vaani Kapoor’s character is promising, her arc could have been more central.

Also, viewers expecting traditional masala tropes — big action set-pieces, item songs, courtroom speeches — may find the film “dry.” But that’s by design.

🎯 Verdict: 4 out of 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Raid 2 is not a crowd-pleaser in the traditional Bollywood sense. It’s a methodical, cerebral thriller that trusts its audience to think, reflect, and observe. With powerhouse performances (especially from Ajay Devgn and Riteish Deshmukh), layered writing, and a moral compass still intact, it cements Raj Kumar Gupta as a filmmaker with a unique lens on India’s socio-political machinery.

This is the kind of sequel that doesn't just repeat the original — it evolves it, complicates it, and deepens it.