New Delhi:

Singham? Oh no, not again. Yes, that's so annoying Singham again, Rohit Shetty's latest bloated, overheated and distracted addition to his cop universe is, unless you're a die-hard fan of the empty and sustained bombast these potboilers are based on.

Singham's roar is still loud enough. The deafening background music doesn't let the noise subside by any decibel point. But the impact, no matter how strident and urgent the plot, wears thin and cries out for a drastic reinvention.

Lazy filmmaking with the lowest common denominator Singham again sucks the power out of the police action thriller and leaves it gasping for air – and real inspiration. The film inserts scenes from mythology – a narrator connects one episode to another – to serve as parallels to present-day events. The intended connection between myth and reality is all too stilted.

When the tank is leaking so worryingly and the game depends on tricks that are long past their sell-by date, the most convenient way is to fall back on Hindi cinema's treasure trove of ideas and characters – the Ramayan. But even the Lord cannot save Singham again. The arrows in the film's quiver are blunt. Big time.

A decade after Ajay Devgn's cocky Deputy Commissioner of Police Bajirao Singham pursued the evil empire of a false godman Singham returnshe comes back in Singham again to wage a cross-border war against a terrorist, Danger Lanka aka Zubair Hafeez (Arjun Kapoor).

The evil man does not wage a religious war. Instead, he is on a personal mission to avenge his father and uncles and free his grandfather Omar Hafeez (Jackie Shroff) from a maximum security Indian prison. He decides to use Singham's wife Avni (Kareena Kapoor Khan) as a bargaining chip.

Another thing is that the lady is a wealthy woman, an official of the Ministry of Culture, who is conceptualizing and executing a new-age version of the Ram Leela. Shouldn't she be able to give as much as she gets? But no, that would defeat the purpose of the film. Therefore, she is portrayed as unhappy and vulnerable.

In this Ram Sita Ravana redux, the action hero slips into the old-fashioned garb of a savior crusader to right the wrongs of a corrupt villain who is initially mistaken for a mere drug lord. One massacre and one kidnapping later, Singham realizes he's dealing with a vicious psychopath.

It might be easier to find a needle in a haystack than to find any semblance of novelty in the plot that the maximalist police drama conveys. Not only is the weaving of Ramayan references into a crude good-versus-evil construct neither fascinating as an idea nor particularly exciting as a plot device, but it is also marred by a persistently hackneyed approach to familiar conventions.

Since the script, written by six writers (including director Rohit Shetty), is not particularly original, Singham again enlists the support of a phalanx of law enforcement officers and a lawyer (Deepika Padukone, who makes a promising entry into a male-dominated universe but is not given the opportunity to outshine her male co-actors).

When Devgn slipped into the ballistic franchise-defining “Aata majhi satakli” mode in 2011 Singham, The main actor was almost a decade and a half younger. The great acts of bravery and daring he performed were in keeping with director Shetty's vision of an invincible cop who was so dedicated to his job that he knew no fear.

The man is now older and a role model for his peers and juniors alike, but around the brave policeman there are still jeeps, SUVs and buildings in flames – the hallmark of the directorial style that has prevailed with varying degrees of success in three other films in the franchise (Singham returns, Simmba And Sooryavanshi). The appeal of Shetty’s “action design” has waned.

This fifth installment in the Rohit Shetty Cop Universe series attempts to portray everything with much greater verve than ever before. But all the hypocritical pomposity is proving counterproductive.

Fans of the genre should enjoy the overdose of bravado and rhetoric that emerges from the plot, rather than just making room for cameo appearances Simmba And Sooryavanshi but also by Salman Khan's Chulbul Pandey, a creature from a different realm and a different sensibility (who appears in an end-credits scene to give a glimpse of what might be in store in this universe.

Bajirao Singham is of course the sincere one who can't stop anyone when he loses his temper. He is Lord Ram. He is insurmountable. The male police officers around him are each assigned stereotypical characteristics. DCP Veer Sooryavanshi (Akshay Kumar), a present-day personification of Garuda who arrives hanging from a helicopter, is seriously in the wrong but runs afoul of names.

ACP Sangram Bhalerao aka Simmba (Ranveer Singh) is a street slang man from Mumbai, a witty monkey god who enjoys jumping into difficult situations and grinning from ear to ear. And ACP Satya Bali (Tiger Shroff) is the young, eager Lakshman, always ready to learn at the feet of the former master, who now has three films to his credit.

The actors, led by Ajay Devgn, who tread tried and tested territory, do their part, Ranveer Singh a little more than the others. But even if all the parts are added together, the profit is negligible. The problem is that they are not obliged to act. They either strut like models on the catwalk, deliver stuffy lines about duty and morality, or try to provide comic relief.

By far the brightest spark ever Singham again is Ranveer Singh. With his constant chatter, he's actually mostly funny. There is hardly anything else Singham again this would encourage the audience to intone “encore” together.

Deepika Padukone's character – whatever I learned, I learned from you, she tells Bajirao Singham more than once – definitely deserves an entire film in itself. This could give Rohit Shetty's Cop Universe a chance.

For Singham himself, one more mission would be one too many. The crackers in this one are all noise and no nous. Did anyone expect anything different?