Release date:
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June 6, 2014
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Director:
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A.R. Murugadoss
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Cast:
Language:
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Akshay Kumar,
Sumeet Raghavan, Sonakshi Sinha, Farhad (Freddy Daruwala), Zakir Hussain,
Govinda
Hindi
|
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Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty is designed as a
cloying tribute to our defence forces, with a populist they-can-do-no-wrong
tone. Instead of extending the courtesy of basic research to our men and women
in uniform though, writer-director A.R. Murugadoss serves up an ill-informed,
far-fetched film so filled with lacunae and platitudes that even its pacy action
scenes, occasional humour and charismatic hero can’t save it from being embarrassingly
stupid.
Holiday is a remake of
Murugadoss’ own 2012 Tamil hit Thuppakki
starring Vijay and Kajal Aggarwal. A hit machine in south India, the director made
his Bollywood debut with Ghajini
starring Aamir Khan and Asin. That film offered us the novelty of a shirtless Aamir
with ripped muscles and a tragic past plus a successful south Indian film
heroine debuting in Bollywood. Holiday,
on the other hand, gives us a re-run of the Akshay Kumar we’ve seen repeatedly in
action comedies, with Sonakshi Sinha once again playing a pretty showpiece in
the background.
It’s one thing to defy logic in masala entertainers that ask not to be
taken seriously, quite another to serve up a puerile plot in a film that
clearly deems itself extremely intense. Consider this… While on holiday in
Mumbai, Captain Virat Bakshi (Akshay) of the Indian Army witnesses a bus bombing.
He captures the man responsible for the blast and hands him over to the police,
but when the fellow escapes, guess what? Our hero – a member of the khufiya Defence Intelligence Agency – nabs
the terrorist and keeps him imprisoned in his own bedroom! The chap is there
for almost three days, Virat even tortures him, but no one hears a sound! Not Virat’s family. Not neighbours. Not even the
large Mumbai police contingent stationed outside for Virat’s security.
This episode takes place early on in the film.
Without giving away any details, let’s just say the rest of the film is devoted
to Virat saving Mumbai from a dozen bomb blasts with the help of a dozen fellow
Armymen who are also on holiday. The people who are actually on holiday seem to
be the clueless Mumbai Police, the state and Central governments who do nothing
in this matter, unless you count Virat’s sidekick, the inexplicably ignorant Sub-Inspector
Mukund Deshmukh (Sumeet Raghavan). Also in the picture is a romance with a girl
called Saiba (Sonakshi).
For the most part, Holiday is a carbon copy of Thuppakki,
with a new cast. The differences are crucial though. The terrorists’ boss in
Holiday is played by the ineffectual
Freddy Daruwala a.k.a. Farhad. The original had the sexy, always effective
Vidyut Jamwal. In the absence of a worthy opponent, Virat makes the terrorists
look even more foolish than the script intended.
Holiday also departs from Thuppakki with its clumsy efforts not to be labelled anti-Muslim. In one scene when
Virat relates an anecdote about the patriotic family of an Indian soldier
serving on the border who was tortured by the enemy, the soldier in question is
given an overtly Muslim name, unlike in Thuppakki.
Okay I guess, but the effort becomes laughable when a terrorist who is set to
infiltrate the Indian defence establishment in Holiday is given the Goan Christian name Allwyn D’souza – which is
silly and off the mark considering that India has so far not seen terror
networks emerging from the Christian, Parsi and Buddhist communities.
Another dissimilarity is that while Vijay is about
a decade older than Kajal, he does not look like her daddy. On the other hand,
the two decades separating Akshay-Sonakshi are glaring, although he’s
beautifully trim whereas she’s tubby and large. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not
expecting 46-year-old heroes to retire. Point is, Akshay makes an effort to
dress and prance around like a boy, especially in the song Tu hi to hai. In Blame the
love she wears a babydoll dress and looks like a kid yet to lose her puppy
fat, dancing with her slim papa. It’s also amusing when he’s part of a ladka ladki ko dekhne aaya hai scene
where Virat’s age is not specified, so one assumes we’re expected to view this
‘ladka’ as Saiba’s contemporary.
C’mon Akki, you’re the fittest of your male contemporaries in Bollywood, but
please start acting your age and with
women your age.
Kudos to Murugadoss for remaking his inane-yet-entertaining
Tamil film by adding new flaws instead of plugging those in the original. This
must be a new milestone in the history of remakes.
As a civilian I can only point out what common
sense tells me are failings in the terror-related sequences in Holiday (eg: cars in the vicinity of the
aforementioned bus bomb blast are engulfed in flames, but Mukund standing right
next to the bus is unharmed). I found so many factual errors, clichés and
stereotypes in a barely-few-minutes-long Christian wedding scene – a milieu I’m
familiar with – that I can’t begin to imagine what police and Army personnel
would spot in the entire film. In that single church scene, Virat and his
friends are shown laughing and talking loudly next to the altar, the wedding
cake is set up next to the altar, and
the wedding guests hang around inside
the church eating cake after the ceremony. Err…churches are strictly solemn
spaces and none of the above would customarily be allowed. Besides, how about
for a change showing a sari-wearing Christian bride, considering that that’s
the way a majority of Indian Christian brides dress? And puhleeease, it is not
the custom for Indian Christian brides and grooms to kiss in church at the end
of the ceremony! It’s irritating when our filmmakers persist in showing
Christian weddings that are not inspired by Indian
Christian weddings but by the many Western films and teleserials they’ve seen!
I think I might just re-watch this film with a friend from the Army to see what
s/he thinks of the Captainsaab’s functioning.
Lack of authenticity, populism and playing it safe
are in fact the hallmarks of this film which justifies torture, deifies Armymen
in a maudlin fashion, and casually portrays the sexual harassment of the
heroine by the hero as legitimate courtship. When a woman has clearly stated
that she isn’t interested in you, it’s not acceptable to kiss her reflection in
your mirror while she is watching, or to stalk her, grab her on a basketball
court and smooch her. In a clear bid to appease its mass male audience, the
film later even has Virat telling Saiba that girls like her blame boys for responding
to sexual signals that the girl is deliberately sending out.
The sillyfest might actually have worked if it
weren’t for the manner in which Holiday
alternates between illogical-but-energetic action scenes and Virat’s fluffy
song-and-dance-led romantic interludes with Saiba. Tu hi to hai and Aaj dil
shayarana lagta hai are at least nice tunes. The latter is that mandatory feature of most Hindi films these
days – a song shot in deserts and forts with the heroine in flowing costumes
and the couple posing around – while the rather tuneless Blame the love is that mandatory nightclub number. Throughout Holiday, Akshay intermittently shows us flashes
of the talent and charm that have made him the star he is today. In some comic
sequences, Sonakshi gives us glimpses of an aspect of her acting skills that
remains untapped while she persists in picking up mindless scripts in which she
is a marginal player. To be fair, this film is neither loud nor crude like
Akshay’s recent misadventures Boss, Khiladi 786 and Rowdy Rathore. The problem with Holiday
is that the formulaic comedy and romance end up diluting the thriller that it
is intended to be, while the entire film is weighed down by its senselessness.
The Indian Army, Navy and Air Force are not peopled
by saints, but they remain institutions this country can be proud of. They
deserve better than this immature tribute.
Rating
(out of five stars): **1/2
CBFC Rating (India):
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U/A
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Running time:
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171 minutes
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