The popular saying ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover,’ which means do not judge the value of something beforehand, only by its outward appearance, often does not hold true for the Indian audience. We have a tendency to prejudge things and are often proved wrong. A recently released film, Commando 2: The Black Money Trail has impressed everyone with its box office performance. The movie once again pointed out that how wrong it is to assume that a film won’t work just because it does not boast of a star cast. Box Office figures of the first weekend collection of the film indicate that star cast is not enough to keep a film running— if it is good, people will watch it irrespective of how famous the actor or the actress is!
Commando 2: The Black Money Trail, which hit theatres on 3rd March, has been directed by Deven Bhojani. The action drama stars a two-film-old Vidyut Jammwal, who is trying to create a niche for himself as an action hero in Bollywood and Adah Sharma, a popular face in south films, who has acted in just a couple of Hindi films. The film has surprised everybody by performing way beyond it was expected to do and has grossed over Rs 15 crores at the box office!
Vidyut Jammwal-Adah Sharma starrer Commando 2 turns out to be a surprise performer at the end of its opening weekend!
Commando 2 has outshone several films, which released in the past few months, on the basis of its opening weekend collection. These include films, which boast of a star cast like Rangoon, OK Jaanu and Irada, as well as those starring relatively fresh faces like Running Shaadi. The Vidyut Jammwal starrer is also providing a stiff competition to Deepika Padukone’s debut Hollywood flick xXx: Return of Xander Cage, which boasted of Vin Diesel’s name as her co-star. That’s stunning!
Not just films, which have released this year, Commando 2 has grossed a lot better than several films of last year, which performed way below expectation. Shockingly, the list includes names of much-awaited sequels like Rock On 2, Kahaani 2, Tere Bin Laden Dead Or Alive, Great Grand Masti and Jai Gangaajal, which feature names like Farhan Akhtar, Vidya Balan, Arjun Rampal and Priyanka Chopra among others. Commando 2 also did better than some films, about which expectations were sky-high. Katrina Kaif starrer Fitoor and Baar Baar Dekho, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan-Randeep Hooda starrer Sarbjit definitely falls in this category. Despite critical acclaim and with actors like Manoj Bajpayee, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Naseeruddin Shah, films like Aligarh, Raman Raghav 2.0 and Waiting put up a disappointing show at the box office last year.
As we have said time and again that nobody, perhaps including the almighty, can predict what is going to happen at the box office, Commando 2 proved us true and how! The film which took a great start on its first day and dropped a little on its second, only to recover on its third day has definitely taken all by surprise— especially those who unfortunately tend to judge a film only by its star cast. It’s time they take Commando 2 as a learning lesson.
