Sanjay Dutt is in on it, and perhaps he is the only one. As Sadak 2 meanders between fake babas and greedy families, as it slaps on the melodrama and the rest of the cast goes through the paces, Sanjay Dutt really gets into the spirit of things.

His Ravi is grizzled and shows his gut, but that doesn’t stop him from going head-to-head with the first baddie he sees. Don’t miss the smile on his face and the song on his lips as he goes at it. He brings the only moments of joy in this uniformly dreary outing.

The trouble with Sadak 2 is that it is so deeply entrenched in the worst aspects of 90s filmmaking that all of Dutt’s aching intensity and hell-for-leather action cannot free it. It’s a far cry from the superb cinema Mahesh Bhatt served us back in the day – I speak of Naam and Zakhm, Arth and Daddy. Sadak 2 regurgitates the most cliched, exaggerated pulp that Bollywood spewed out in the decade, and in the one preceding it.

The themes of death, suicide and mental illness are all pervasive in the film and are handled with all the finesse of a bull in a china shop. Aching for his lost love, Sanjay’s Ravi constantly talks of a ‘reunion up in the heavens’ and often tries to act on it. The one time his friend manages to drag him to the hospital, the doctor asks him what he would do if his house was on fire. His answer involves a can of petrol. Alia Bhatt’s Aarya, who is trying to unmask a ‘dhongi baba’ named Gyaan Prakash (Makrand Deshpande), is quickly labelled crazy and sent to the same doc. There is even a mention of her being threatened with electric shock therapy!