Baaghi 4 is less a film than a stunt reel stitched together: Tiger Shroff’s Ronny exists to fight, bleed, break bones and do it shirtless. Beyond that simple promise, the movie offers a thin, often bewildering story, flamboyant production design and a handful of odd pleasures.
The plot (such as it is) follows Ronny — now a onetime Defence Sea Forces man — who’s obsessed with Alisha (Sandhu), the impossibly versatile beauty who may or may not be real. His brother Deepu (Talpade) provides comic-relief poverty and dubious housing, Olivia / Pratishtha (a wasted Bhumi Pednekar?) plays the prostitute-with-a-heart, and Heather-style carnival-Mad-Max worldbuilding places them all in “Chandara”, a fantasy locale where carnivals, beaches and mountain vistas sit next to masked funerals.
Sanjay Dutt’s self-styled “shaitaan” is the film’s big-name thunderbolt: velvet jackets, tigers-as-pets and maniacal laughs. He’s scenery-chewing in the way the film asks its stars to be — big, loud and immediately legible. There are a handful of genuinely arresting visual moments (the film’s carnival and set pieces have a lurid, comic-book bravado), and the action choreography will satisfy viewers who come purely for the physical thrills.
But narrative logic is constantly optional. Alisha’s improbable mansion, the one-off appearances of dozens of “fostered” children, and the repeated deus-ex machina beatdowns stretch credulity into parody. The film mistakes repetition of violence for escalation — just when you think the stunt has peaked, it jumps higher and keeps going. The attempts at emotional stakes (a woman in peril; a brother’s loyalty) are undercut by a screenplay that habitually prefers the next fight to any character work.
Tonally, the movie oscillates between melodrama, cartoon villainy and forced gravitas — often within the same scene. That volatility produces odd, occasionally entertaining moments: surprising reversals, an over-the-top line like “I will marry you Chaakoo,” and the delightfully absurd sight of Ronny taking tender pauses mid-pendulum-hang. But these are flashes rather than foundations.
Verdict: Baaghi 4 delivers on spectacle and stuntcraft for fans who want a nonstop action carnival. For anyone hoping for a coherent story, believable relationships or emotional depth, it will feel hollow and repetitive. It’s a film that keeps surprising you — mostly because it refuses to stop.
