Rating: B
Dir: Ali Abbas Zafar
Star: Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif, Sajjad Delafrooz, Paresh Rawal
This is a sequel to Ek Tha Tiger, which I hadn’t seen at the time of writing. I doubt it makes a lot of difference, to be honest, since the basics here are fairly simple. Indian intelligence agent Avinash Singh Rathore (Khan), known as “Tiger”, has dropped off the grid, and is considered dead by all but a few. He’s now living in Austria with his wife, former Pakistani intelligence agent Zoya (Kaif) and their young son. However, his country needs him after ISIS take over the Iraqi city of Ikrit, including its hospital where 25 Indian nurses work. With America threatening an air-strike due to the presence of ISIS leader Abu Usman (Delafrooz), Tiger has only a few days to form a team, get into the hospital and rescue the hostages.
Yeah, it’s quite straightforward, and that’s kinda refreshing in a world full of tortured anti-heroes. Tiger is unflinchingly patriotic, loyal to a fault, and a perfect husband and father. The first scene we see him, he obeys his son’s request not to kill the wolves which attack them on an Austrian mountain. I can now cross “putting a wolf in a sleeper hold” off my movie Bingo card. It’s all very well-calculated to bring a Bollywood audience to their feet, though I’m not sure Tiger really needed to take his shirt off for the film’s climax (top). Interestingly though, it’s not as overtly jingoistic as some of the Chinese action films I’ve watched. Loving your country here, doesn’t mean hating others.
In particular, this ends up being a joint mission between the Indian agency, RAW (a name which confused me for obvious reasons!) , and their Pakistani counterparts, the ISI, because there are also fifteen Pakistani nurses present. Given the long-simmering tensions between the two countries, it feels like a brave approach. Tiger straightforwardly promotes the collaboration, the two sides finding common ground in their mission, and hatred of ISIS. Of course, his marriage to Zoya is also a nod to this, and she doesn’t just sit back and let him do all the hostage-saving. She ends up kicking no small amount of fundamentalist arse herself, in order to obtain the plans of the hospital for her hubby, then also staging a crucial diversion.
It all resonated well with the intended audience: at one point, the trailer was the most-watched preview ever on YouTube, surpassing The Force Awakens. Easy to see why, since this is a well-crafted and fun piece of entertainment. It’s not quite as spectacularly berserk as RRR, though there are still a few “I’m so sure” moments, not least one involving a car stunt. ISIS also can’t shoot for shit, to an almost comedic degree. I can’t say it mattered too much, fitting in with the general throwback feel, and the requisite musical numbers are mostly worked in subtly too. It does not feel 160 minutes long, certainly, with my attention sustained throughout, not least by Khan’s forceful screen presence.