Lanka is burning.

 Singham Again (2024) is the latest installment in Rohit Shetty's Cop Universe,and while it does feature all of the maverick supercops who play by their own rules and get results, as well as establishing some new result getting rule-breakers, it's still not The Avengers.  It does include even more avenging than previous installments, though, and significantly more avenging than any of the Avengers movies did.

At the end of Sooryavanshi, supercop Bajirao Singham (Ajay Devgn) swore to bring terrorist mastermind Omar Hafeez (Jackie Shroff) to justice. Then, apparently, he took a job in Kashmir and eventually lucked into an encounter with Hafeez, arresting him after a surprisingly mundane fight scene. (The laws of physics usually bend in the vicinity of Singham, but this was a scene that could really happen.)  After the failure of his previous schemes, Hafeez moved into drug smuggling, bringing drugs into India from Sri Lanka, and using the profits to finance terrorist activities.  Singham is appointed to lead Shiva Squad, a new organization drawn from police departments across India, to combat this threat.

Two years later, Singham's wife Avni (Kareena Kapoor) is producing and hosting a nine day production of Ramlila, interspersing the reenactment of the Ramayana with a tour of the places described in the epic. Singham is kept busy with Shiva Squad, and they've finally caught a break - a group of fishermen have been caught off the coast of Tamil Nadu carrying drugs. The prisoners refuse to talk until Singham arrives to threaten them personally, but they eventually give him a name: Danger Lanka (Arjun Kapoor).

Thanks to the tip, DCP Shakti Shetty (Deepika Padukone), also known as "Lady Singham", captures three of Lanka's men.  She's supposed to deliver them to Singham in the morning,but that night Lanka and his men rescue them, setting the police station on fire and killing everyone there in the process.  Shakti is devastated, but Singham convinces her to avenge her fallen colleagues.

Lanka is playing a different game, though.  With the help of Avni's assistant (Sara Arfeen Khan) she's lured into a trap and abducted.  Thanks to the timely intercession of ACP Satya Bali (Tiger Shroff) and the sacrifice of another police officer (Dayanand Shetty) Avni manages to escape, at least temporarily.  Bali takes her to the ashram run by his adopted mother, but Lanka and his men attack in force, and Avni is shot and then recaptured; Singham arrives, but he's too late to do anything but beat up a lot of people.

Lanka has a hidden agenda.  His real name is Zubair Hafeez, Omar's grandson, and he's avenging his uncles, who were summarily executed by the heroes at the end of Sooryavanshi.  He promises to release Avni,but only if Omar is turned over to him, along with Singham and his fellow maverick cops, Simmba (Ranveer Singh) and Sooryavanshi (Akshay Kumar).  Singham won't do anything unless he is sure that Avni is alright, so Lanka will allow Simmba to visit his lair and see for himself.

Lanka's  evil plan is based on the Ramayana, casting himself as Ravan.  And that might have been a surprise except that the movie hammers home the Ramayana connection at every opportunity, cutting back and forth between the contemporary action and the performance of the Ramlila, making it absolutely clear that this plot is just like the Ramayana and pointing out the Ramayana counterparts of all of the characters, while the Ramlila's narration spells out exactly what the intended moral is.  

The action scenes are every bit as over the top as you'd expect from a Singham movie, but everything else is completely po-faced, from Singham's many, many dramatic speeches about family and vengeance to Avni making condescending remarks about people like her son Shaurya (Viren Vazirani) who consider the Ramayana to be mythology rather than history.

Things brighten up considerably when Simmba is on screen; Ranveer Singh switches between action hero and comic relief at the drop of a hat, but he seems to be having a fantastic time, and he livens up the overly serious action/drama/patriotic epic proceedings.

But my real problem with Singham Again is the problem that I have with all of the Cop Universe movies. Singham and friends are presented as the incorruptible ideal police officers, but they are happy to step outside of the law   and summarily execute people when they feel it's right. We're supposed to trust them toact as judge, jury and executioner because the movies assure us that they're good cops, but it doesn't want us to consider the possibility that these cops could be wrong, or even less  than perfect. Absolutely nobody points out that the only reason Lanka started his campaign of bloody revenge is because Singham and company executed his relatives without a trial.  

Simmba is fun and the action scenes are visually impressive, but overall it's less realistic than the time that Young Singham turned into Aquaman and rescued a mermaid princess.