Vadh 2 Movie Review: Neena Gupta, Sanjay Mishra fails to deliver on its promise | Movie-review News
4 min readFeb 6, 2026 04:02 PM IST
Vadh 2 Movie Review: If you compare the two, the spiritual successor of the 2022 Vadh is better than the original, but as a stand-alone, Vadh 2 stops short on delivering on the promise it begins with.
First off, though, props to the way the prison drama gives attention to all its characters, not just to the two main leads: Neena Gupta and Sanjay Mishra bear the same names, but, in an interesting turn, do not reprise their roles.
In the first film, Shambhunath and Manju are middle-aged spouses, done in by the selfishness of an only son. In this one, the former works in Shivpuri prison, the latter is an inmate, serving life imprisonment for a double murder.
The connection between the two in Vadh 2 is that of a pair who have come to learn each other’s rhythms through a crevice-in-a-wall, bridging the distance prisons create between the incarcerated and the free. Manju has devised ways of communicating with Shambhunath, who is not just the provider of illicit goods — mainly ‘daaru’ — which become prime currency in jail, but also someone who develops a soft spot for his partner-in-crime.
The entrance of Keshav (Akshay Dogra), a hot-headed criminal type who casts his lusty eye on scared fresh intake Naina (Yogita Bihani) throws things out of gear. New jailor Prakash Singh (Kumud Mishra), who takes pride in being casteist, cracks the whip on the goings-on, resulting in a murder. Sharp cop Ateet (Amitt K Singh) is dispatched to crack the case, and secrets start unravelling.
If you kill a man who deserves killing, are you guilty, or have you done the right thing? Once again, it is not a mere killing. Once again, it is termed ‘vadh’ by Mishra’s Shambhunath, and once again, the whydunit takes us into a morally complex situation where you are left pondering over crime and punishment, and justice.
Or, let’s say, it should have, because that’s the crux of both films. But the writing falters after the atmospheric set-up, showing us its hand earlier than it should have, telegraphing its punches (one appears to have been ‘borrowed’ from a Richard Osman mystery): when you show us a deep freezer in the home of someone who has no business having it, and mention it more than once, that’s the end of all tension, even before the reveal.
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While veterans Gupta and Mishra, as well as the other Mishra, do their job like the seasoned actors they are, the others manage to leave a mark, even if you are left wondering just why a cop’s chiselled chest is given a whole scene to itself. The dark interiors of a prison are shot well, but like all things Bollywood, the background music is relentless, never giving us a break.
What does save it is the climactic twist, in which old dots are connected, and a much-needed note of redemption is injected into the proceedings.
Vadh 2 movie cast: Neena Gupta, Sanjay Mishra, Kumud Mishra, Amitt K Singh, Yogita Bihani, Akshay Dogra, Shilpa Shukla
Vadh 2 movie director: Jaspal Singh Sandhu
Vadh 2 movie rating: 2.5 stars
