Most of the cliches in Subedaar carry a tinge of irony. One can almost imagine the glee on director Suresh Triveni’s face after canning a campy, unsubtle scene. The film feels like a very deliberate hark back to the disillusioned lone wolf of the late 1980s, early 1990s — a genre that was largely cornered by the successors of Bachchan’s angry young man – Sunny Deol, Jackie Shroff and Sanjay Dutt. It’s no surprise then that it’s one of their contemporaries, Anil Kapoor, playing Retired Subedaar Arjun Maurya in this First Blood (1982)-meets-Prahaar (1991)-meets-The Equalizer (2014) concoction. Triveni is a sophisticated filmmaker dabbling in what’s considered a pulpy genre.The premise is an evergreen one – a silent-type outsider, who talks with his kicks and punches to those who usually deserve it. However, the brooding action hero has lately been a vehicle for polemics on brittle masculinity, self-victimising history lessons or becoming a patriotic punchline. The protagonist is a soldier here too, but the rot thankfully doesn’t lie among the green walls of Pakistan, or bearded men saying janaab in every other line. Triveni’s film is set in a fictitious town called Kokh (translates to ‘womb’) of a made-up state called Maha Pradesh, which seems situated near the ravines of Chambal in Madhya Pradesh. The town is ground zero for Babli Didi’s (Mona Singh) illegal sand-mining operation, which she operates from behind bars with the help of her right-hand man, Softy (Faisal Malik) and volatile step-brother, Prince (Aditya Rawal). The de-facto mafia boss, Prince coasts through his days, provoking every second person he lays his eyes on. As he’s going to find out, he shouldn’t have picked on the army veteran.A still from ‘Subedaar’.Triveni sets up the hopelessness of Kokh quickly, showcasing apathy and lawlessness in broad strokes. A boy dies by drowning in a river, as a consequence of the sand-mining, we’re told. His uncle’s head is blown off in the next scene, for naming and shaming the mafia for the death. Ranju (Snehalata Siddhartha) grieving her son and brother, the sole witness against the culprits, is abducted by Prince’s lackeys. Arjun, who recently lost his wife, Sudha (Khushbu – who played Kapoor’s sister in Meri Jung), can’t seem to be able to close a bank account in a branch, where an elderly lady threatens to set herself on fire — after her requests to withdraw money from her account are repeatedly denied. In a nearby college, Arjun’s distant daughter, Shyama (Radhika Madan), is harassed by a classmate using lewd videos. It’s a version of the world one might imagine after scrolling past the filthy comments sections on various social media platforms: callous, cruel and irredeemable.Co-writers Triveni and Prajwal Chandrashekhar use the motif of a red gypsy (a desirable car for an India of the past) – setting it up as the trigger for Arjun to stop tolerating Prince’s tyranny. In a memorable action scene – Arjun teaches the lanky, inexperienced mob boss a lesson. The writers draw parallels between the run-ins between Arjun and Prince, and Shyama with her college bullies. It appears Triveni is trying to hint at Bollywood’s toxic masculinity syndrome, since he names the bullies: Ranveer, Ranbir, Kaushal and Rajpal. The two conflicts set themselves up for a bombastic finale in the first hour, however, logic disappears from both tracks in the second hour.A still from ‘Subedaar’.Setting themselves up for bloody confrontations, one would imagine both Arjun and Shyama would plan slightly better before bumping into their nemesis, again and again. Cornered like they are, I tried to find a reason why the two characters didn’t just kill their tormentors – or just leave town for good. There’s a backstory around Arjun, why he couldn’t show up for his hospitalised wife –the cause for the distance with his daughter – which is painfully unconvincing. There’s the character of Saurabh Shukla, playing Arjun’s army comrade Prabhakar, who isn’t the most convincing during action scenes. I kept imagining if the fight choreography could be done to hide this pretty obvious flaw.Among the actors, Aditya Rawal has a lot of fun with his part of the enfant terrible, however, his character is clearly no match for Kapoor’s physicality. As much as the sadistic relish he shows in the film, I kept imagining Rawal as the second choice for a role that Raghav Juyal could play with his eyes shut. Mona Singh, doing the Bundelkhandi accent, is competent as the straight-faced, speaking-in-monotone villain, until the writers abandon her. Faisal Malik, who has spent a large part of his career playing characters like Softy, showcases unexpected verve. As the frowny girl, one can’t help but be disappointed by the same-ness of Madan’s performance as Shyama. It’s Kapoor – who ignites this film with his smouldering screen presence, especially in a climax that feels like it’s toying with its audience for no good reason.Subedaar never matches the fun quotient of The Equalizer or Taken films (both franchises revived and repositioned two middle-aged actors as action heroes) – but it does its bit of correction. In an ecosystem where the young ‘uns speak the populist (and problematic) language of faceless mobs, it’s refreshing to see Kapoor raging against the dying of the light, with some old-school conviction. In a world as unsettled as ours, we’ll accept these micro gifts.*Subedaar is streaming on Amazon Prime Video