Release
date:
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December 22, 2017
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Director:
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Ali Abbas Zafar
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Cast:
Language:
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Salman Khan,
Katrina Kaif, Angad Bedi, Kumud Mishra, Girish Karnad
Hindi
|
“Yeh toh puri army lekar aa gaye hai,” a
scared Indian nurse says at one point as she looks out of the window and sees
ISIS troops landing up in droves at a hospital in Iraq where she and her
colleagues have been held captive.
“Ghabrao mat,” says her companion, an
Indian RAW agent, “abhi Tiger zinda hai.”
Literally translated,
those last three words – which are also this film's title – simply mean that
someone called Tiger is alive. But since this is conventional commercial
Bollywood fare and the aforesaid Tiger is played by a certain Mister Salman
Khan, they are also a metaphor for “all is well with the world kyunki (to borrow and adapt a signature
phrase from the works of another iconic Khan) Salman hai naa”.
How foolish are the
governments, policy analysts, intelligence agencies and academics of the world
investing time and money in figuring out how to bring ISIS to its knees. They
should have known that the solution lies in the muscular arms and golden heart
of a character played by Salman.
Tiger Zinda Hai’s strength is that it is
unapologetic about its stupidity. And so, although it is for the most part
simplistic in the socio-political statements it lays on thick, it is packed
with so much action that it ends up being a fun, even if clichéd, Bollywood-and-Bond-style
masala flick which, if you are looking closely enough, does make a subversive
point or two.
Writer-director Ali Abbas Zafar’s film is a sequel to Kabir Khan’s 2012
hit Ek Tha Tiger in which Salman
played Indian espionage agent Avinash Singh Rathore a.k.a. Manish Chandra
a.k.a. Tiger who, while on a mission, falls in love with a Pakistani spy called
Zoya (Katrina Kaif). Tiger Zinda Hai
continues where Ek Tha Tiger left
off. Zoya and Avinash have quit their respective agencies and are now living in
hiding along with their son Junior. Their calm life is interrupted when RAW
seeks Tiger’s help to free a bunch of Indian nurses who have been taken as
hostages in Iraq.
The opening text
acknowledges that the film is inspired by true events. The reference here is to
an episode in 2014 involving 46 Indian nurses who were held at a hospital in
Tikrit, caught between ISIS and Iraqi government forces. This remarkable real
life drama was chronicled beautifully by Mollywood earlier this year in Take Off starring Parvathy, Kunchacko
Boban and Fahadh Faasil. The Malayalam film though was told through the eyes of
one of the nurses who was at the forefront of the
rescue effort and who, by coordinating with the Indian Embassy in
Iraq, ultimately helped get herself and her colleagues back to India. Bollywood’s take on this well-documented episode from
our contemporary history sets this woman firmly aside (along with the embassy,
the governments of India and Kerala) and revolves around a single man
instead.
If you have seen
the sobre, credible, realistic yet supremely entertaining Take Off you may understand why Tiger
Zindagi Hai feels so ridiculous in comparison and so shamefully
male-centric. It took considerable strength of will this morning to put that
film out of my mind while I watched Tiger take the reins and
make a meal of ISIS. (For the record, ISIS is called ISC here, and Tikrit is
Ikrit.) I was rewarded for my efforts with humour – some intentional, some not
– and intermittent adrenaline rushes.
Both Salman and
Katrina are limited actors, but they are charismatic and pleasing to the eyes
here as always. Katrina is convincing enough in her action scenes to make you
wonder why it has not occurred to any Bollywood director to cast her along with
perhaps Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra in an all-out action flick centred
around women. Salman has been heavy on his feet in recent years, but a
combination of well-planned stunt choreography and clever camerawork ensures
that we are not aware of that at any point in this film, unlike in Ek Tha Tiger in which he looked visibly
tired.
Tiger Zinda Hai is a slick production
(though the background score’s jarring resemblance to Don’s music is distracting) and the fisticuffs in it are enjoyable.
It also clearly means well in most political matters even though it feels the
need to underline its messaging repeatedly and plays to the gallery in an India
that is increasingly demanding chest-thumping proof of patriotism from all its
citizens and is openly suspicious of minority communities. So, Tiger and the
other characters stress and re-stress their love for India with lines such as
this one from Zoya: “Sab log samajhte hai
ki duniya mein sabse zyaada pyaar tum mujhse karte ho lekin mujhe pata hai ki
tum mujhse bhi zyaada apne desh se pyaar karte ho” (everyone thinks that
you love me the most in this world, but I know that you love your country even
more than you love me). Tiger’s Muslim colleague gives triple evidence of his desh prem. And since the audience cannot
be trusted to appreciate that theirs is a culturally disparate team, we are
reminded of its Hindu-Muslim-Sikh composition in a pointed exchange between
Tiger and his teammate (Angad Bedi) about what it means to be a sardar. We should have seen that coming
considering that early on, in a scene in which Katrina’s Zoya bashes up a bunch
of goons, the writer felt the need to throw in a character dispensing a line
about this being an example of women’s empowerment. Does an audience that
supports dumbed-down cinema lose the right to complain about spoonfeeding?
Perhaps.
To be fair, Tiger Zinda Hai is not as tacky or loud
as Gadar, a film it references with a
mention of Sunny Deol’s infamous handpump-uprooting scene in which he scared
off the entire Pakistan Army with a bellow. Tiger inhabits a Bollywood that has
evolved to a stage where Pakistanis can now be shown as allies in the face of a
common enemy, and one character, when confronted over Pakistan’s wrongdoings in
Kashmir, gets away with implying that India’s hands are not clean either.
Considering the divisive times we live in, even this fleeting scene, sadly, is
an act of courage that needs to be lauded, as does another contrived passage
involving national flags that pushes the envelope up to a point (though without
crossing a certain line). Even the ISC members we meet are not entirely
satanic.
Tiger Zinda Hai’s supporting cast is a
mixed bag. Kumud Mishra manages to be comical without allowing his comedy to
become incongruous in this grim setting. Paresh Rawal, however, overdoes his
villainous labour contractor. The handsome Angad Bedi is impressive in a small
role that does not challenge him as much as last year’s Pink but still reminds
us that this man is hero material.
Tiger Zinda Hai is not a film that is
meant to be taken too seriously. I mean c’mon, Salman/Tiger takes off his shirt
for no reason at all to give ISC/ISIS and us a generous view of his fabulously
toned and oiled torso and arms in a scene that does not even bother to offer a
logical excuse for his shirtlessness. And after engineering the escape of those
nurses, Tiger and Zoya dance to an item song playing along with the credits. I
laughed through these two stereotypical scenes because by this point I had
given up gasping with exasperation and had surrendered myself to the
idiosyncrasies and ludicrousness of the genre (the genre being Bollywood
masala). If you can see Tiger Zinda Hai
for what it is, you too may not mind its unabashed blend of swag, silliness and
schmaltz.
Rating
(out of five stars): **1/2
CBFC Rating (India):
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UA
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Running time:
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161 minutes
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This review was also published on Firstpost:
nice
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