Rating: B-
Dir: Maneesh Sharma
Star: Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif, Emraan Hashmi, Simran
The YRF Spy Universe continues to pick up momentum, like a snowball rolling downhill. Woe betide anyone dumb enough to get in the way of it. Though the receipts brought in by this were the lowest of the series since Ek Tha Tiger, back in 2012. Is the Bollywood audience suffering from the same kind of thing as we’re seeing with Marvel and DC? Time will tell, as we move further into the active phase of the YSF. The difference here is, I’d be hard-pressed to cite a drop in quality for any audience fatigue. This had the largest budget – albeit a modest by Hollywood standards $38 million – and it certainly appears to be up there on the screen.
The enemy here is a rogue Pakistani agent, Aatish Rehman (Hashmi), who crossed swords with Tiger (Khan) and Zoya (Kaif) in Istanbul, back when they were working on opposite sides. The encounter left Rehman in jail for nine years; now he’s out, and holding one hell of a grudge. He takes steps to compel the couple to steal a briefcase containing missile launch codes. It’s all part of a plan to discredit Pakistan’s dovish Prime Minister so she the hawkish Rehman can replace her in a coup. The melodramatic elements – the reason for the villains enmity, and how he compels T&Z’s compliance – are awesome. It’s the kind of heightened, raw emotional content you rarely see in Western action movies, and a good example of why we watch Bollywood.
That said, I did think the first half was generally stronger, setting the elements up. We get some background on Zoya’s past, and a glorious action set-piece introducing Tiger, riding in to rescue a fellow agent from the Taliban. It’s totally over-cooked: again, why we’re here. Zoya also gets a towel-clad fight scene in a Turkish bath-house against a Chinese general (Michelle Lee). Shame they didn’t go full Eastern Promises… But the cracks eventually start to show. In particular, the inevitable guest appearance of Pathaan to rescue Tiger, payback for the converse scene in Pathaan, left me increasingly convinced Shah Rukh Khan is just not a good actor. Or maybe I just hate his man-bun.
In the opposite way Tiger’s cameo elevated Pathaan, so his cameo drags down Tiger 3, albeit not helped by some disappointing CGI. Thereafter, the film sputters towards the finish line, and with a running-time of 156 minutes, it is a lot of sputtering. It ends in a siege of the Prime Minister’s compound, with Tiger, Zoya and agents from both India and Pakistan trying to keep the politician safe, while Rehman and his forces seek to capture her. This goes on. And on. And on. To the point I quite lost track of what the goal was for the parties involved, although this was somewhat vague to begin with. You can’t complain about the amount of action, for sure. It’s just that you may have no more adrenaline to give, by the time the credits roll.