REVIEW 792: FIGHTER

Release date:	January 25, 2024
Director:	Siddharth Anand
Cast:	Hrithik Roshan, Deepika Padukone, Anil Kapoor, Karan Singh Grover, Akshay Oberoi, Ashutosh Rana
Language:	Hindi

 

“PoK ka matlab hai Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Tumne occupy kiya hai. Maalik hum hai (PoK stands for Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. You have occupied it. But we are the actual owners),” says Hrithik Roshan’s character in the midst of raging fisticuffs with a Pakistani terrorist in the new Hindi film Fighter. 

 

For the record, the dictionary defines maalik as: owner, master, lord, proprietor, husband. In the subtitles given in the trailer, the producers opt for “owner”. 

 

“We are the actual owners.” Never before has a Hindi film spelt out its proprietorial attitude towards Kashmir in such black-and-white terms.

 

Director Siddharth Anand’s Fighter – based on a story by Anand and Ramon Chhib, with a  screenplay by Chhib and dialogues by Hussain Dalal and Abbas Dalal – pretends to be a romance, the saga of an Indian Air Force (IAF) officer whose over-confidence cost him the life of someone dear to him as a result of which he denies himself the right to love and be loved again. Behind that emotive, humane camouflage though, Fighter is just another loud, jingoistic affair in which India and Pakistan battle over Kashmir while the voices of Kashmiris are entirely erased. 

 

That’s precisely what 2023’s Shah Rukh Khan starrer Pathaan (2023) did too, so what’s new with Fighter, you may ask? 

 

Not very much. For one, this abhorrent line on ownership in Fighter is delivered by an A-list star who has not overtly aligned himself with BJP-RSS off screen in the way so many of his Hindi film colleagues have. Pathaan played it safer on this front, to create the false impression of being a progressive film (read my review here) although it was just old wine in a bottle of deceptive dialogues, insidious and intentional ambiguity about the religious identity of the protagonist and the primary antagonist, cleverly disguised pandering to majoritarian sentiments and SRK’s charm. 

 

Second, Fighter is pegged on actual news developments: the suicide bombing in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district in 2019 that killed 40 members of the Central Reserve Police (CRPF), and the IAF’s retaliatory air strike on an alleged terrorist training camp in Balakot, Pakistan.

 

In tenor and spirit nevertheless, Fighter really does feel like Pathaan 2, while Pathaan itself felt like War 2. That Pathaanand War (2019) were also directed by Anand is no coincidence. Reminder: Roshan was the co-lead in War, which might have been nothing more than a noisy, slick action flick if it weren’t for its condescension towards the Muslim patriot played by Tiger Shroff.

 

In Fighter, Roshan is Shamsher Pathania a.k.a. Patty, an ace fighter pilot who is in the bad books of his boss (Anil Kapoor). The latter believes Patty is prone to prioritising personal glory over the interests of his team. Patty is part of a crack team of IAF pilots that includes Minal Rathore (Deepika Padukone) a.k.a. Mini. Obviously these two are drawn together like magnet to metal, but Patty’s past keeps him from openly expressing his feelings for her. 

 

In Chapter 1 we get hackneyed introductory scenes stressing Roshan’s sexiness in a white towel and in pilot’s uniform, and Padukone’s sexiness in uniform, followed by extensive passages of bonhomie between all the members of Patty and Mini’s team. There’s light-hearted teasing, songs, a couple gazing at each other across a space filled with people while music plays in the background, incremental revelations about the enigmatic hero’s painful back story that, as it turns out, lacks novelty, and other familiar elements that are often used in Indian films to superficially establish a sense of fraternity and a pivotal romance. In the background is the Pakistan government and a deadly terrorist – a snarling chap with a bloody red eye called Azhar Akhtar (Rishabh Sawhney) – who they recruit to target Kashmir.

 

Chapter 2 deals with Pulwama and Balakot. 

 

Despite the hyperbolic cartoonishness of Azhar Akhtar and the blatant cover-up that Fighter pulls off on behalf of the Indian government in Pulwama, despite the surfeit of clichés and decibels, the film until this point is carried on the shoulders of Roshan’s good looks, the sparks between him and Padukone, Satchith Paulose’s exquisite cinematography in stunning locales, the adrenaline high that comes from watching pilots in combat in skilfully executed action scenes and the sadness of knowing that those CRPF jawans were indeed murdered in real life. 

 

None of this is enough though to save Chapter 3 from its deafening volume, silliness, unoriginal storytelling, formulaic characterisation, inexorable length and the lies that begin in Chapter 2. 

 

First let’s deal with the cover-up. When the Pulwama terror strike occurred, corporate-owned news media largely avoided asking the obvious questions raised by the public on social media and some experts regarding the massive intelligence failure involved. Many have even ignored the statements by Satyapal Malik who was Jammu and Kashmir’s governor at the time of the Pulwama attack – Malik has said at multiple forums that the attack resulted from the “incompetence” of the Indian establishment, the Union Home Ministry in particular, and the CRPF, while also calling out the Prime Minister himself for his response. 

 

Obviously, Fighter does not have the guts to show any of this. Like every government-pleasing Hindi film since 2014, Fighter is disinterested in introspection, fixated on chest-thumping and backs the position that all acts of courage and all innovation in India have been initiated in the past 10 years. Mirroring the bombast of Uri: The Surgical Strike’s “Hindustan ab chup nahi baithega. Yeh naya Hindustan hai. Yeh ghar mein ghusega bhi, aur maarega bhi (India will no longer remain silent. This is a new India – it will not only enter your house, but it will kill you there),” in Fighter we get a politician, one assumes the PM, surveying the coffins of dead CRPF jawans and saying: “Picchle pachaas saalon mein kisi sarkar ne unki inn harkaton ka muh-thod jawaab nahin diya. Lekin ab bas. Unhe dikhana padega ke baap kaun hai (For the past 50 years, no government has given them a befitting reply. But now…enough. It’s time to show them who’s the boss).” 

 

Fighter kills whatever emotional resonance it had until the Balakot episode by following it up with endless screaming, ridiculously conceived confrontations between the IAF and Pakistani terrorists, and dialoguebaazi that peaks with the “maalik hum hai” line and Patty yelling a threat at the top of his voice that India will turn Pakistan into – wait for it, it’s every aggressive nationalist’s wet dream – “India Occupied Pakistan”. It’s not that Hindi filmdom is incapable of delivering credible battlefield sequences involving India and Pakistan. For a recent example within the commercial Hindi space, refer to Vishnu Varadhan’s Shershaah starring Siddharth Malhotra. 

 

In this segment, the sole Muslim on Patty and Mini’s team, Basheer Khan (Akshay Oberoi), has that inevitable conversation about Islam with a terrorist that has by now been made mandatory for loyal-to-the-vatan Muslims in propagandist Hindi films. 

 

And in the end, Fighter trivialises itself with a steaming hot song ‘n’ dance by the sea that has zero connect with the flavour of the rest of the narrative. Yes of course all those body-baring outfits on Roshan and Padukone are titillating, but the entire package is too imitative to be impactful and is anyway terribly out of place in a film in which it was preceded by bloodshed, a beloved character’s mutilated body and immeasurable heartbreak. In fact, the inclusion of this song, Ishq Jaisa Kuchh, indicates a lack of commitment on the part of the filmmaker to his chosen theme. 

 

Like the entire ensemble cast, Roshan’s acting in Fighter is as okay as it can be in such a film, barring a scene in which, while shouting something like “Main aa raha hoon” in a life-and-death situation, he adopts a trademark tone reminiscent of his character in Koi... Mil Gaya – a tone that few directors have managed to completely control in his dialogue delivery. 

 

Padukone does better but make no mistake about this: she plays an ordinarily written supporting character who ultimately amounts to little more than the leading man’s romantic sidekick and sensual drapery, in a film designed as a showcase for Roshan. 

 

Uri was dangerous because it peddled its agenda with a blend of originality, finesse and craft. War, Pathaan and Fighter are recycled versions of each other and of the entire multitude of war-mongering deshbhakt films of the present era. Fighter actually has some good things going for it to begin with, but gradually squanders those positives by resorting to lazy storytelling to fulfil its agenda. Yawn.

 

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2   

 

Running time:

167 minutes

 

Visuals courtesy: IMDB 

REVIEW 768: LOVE AAJ KAL (2020)

Release date:	February 14, 2020
Director:	Imtiaz Ali
Cast:	Sara Ali Khan, Kartik Aaryan, Randeep Hooda, Arushi Sharma, Simone Singh, Siddharth Kak
Language:	Hindi

Great film romances have the power to make a cynical viewer believe and become so invested in the characters on screen as to yearn for their union. Imtiaz Ali’s Love Aaj Kal redux had the opposite effect on me: it drove me to turn my back on my Gandhian principles and long to smack its ensemble of leads – Zoe, Veer, Raghu and Leena – across the face, then yank them off screen, thus to end the agony of watching this mind-numbing film.

Imtiaz Ali must be suffering a peculiar bankruptcy of ideas that he chose to remake his own 2009 hit Love Aaj Kal with nothing worthwhile to add to what he said 11 years back. That one – the story of differing journeys to the same emotion in the past and present told in parallel – had the collective charisma of Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone and Rishi Kapoor, a cute newcomer called Giselle Monteiro, a narrative structure unusual for Bollywood, the charm of the old-world Khan-Monteiro saga and a darling finale surprise going for it. It was not earth-shatteringly great cinema, but it was nice.

This Love Aaj Kal is what is known as a “spiritual successor” or “spiritual sequel”, except that it is so godawfully boring, contrived and wannabe that it provoked some very unspiritual, unholy feelings in me. Drowning as it is in stereotypes of millennial women and youth at large, Kartik Aaryan’s awkwardness, some surprisingly hammy acting by the usually solid Randeep Hooda and tedium, the new film tragically marks a further decline in the qualitative graph of a writer-director who debuted with the sweet Socha Na Tha in 2005, crackled and popped with the Kareena Kapoor-starrer Jab We Met (2007) and has only shone intermittently since.

Before we get to know Leena (Arushi Sharma) and Zoe (Sara Ali Khan) of Love Aaj Kal 2020, we see them yelling at two men played by Kartik Aaryan. That in itself is a warning bell: Aaryan barely has the skill to pull off even one character who does not look and sound entirely like Aaryan, so imagine the error of stretching him to play two men within the same film. Leena is screaming at Raghu (Aaryan) for stalking her, then she screams at him some more for promising to stop. “Did I tell you to stop?” she hollers. That is the second warning bell: here comes yet another Hindi film peddling the dangerous trope that women intentionally send men confusing signals, that a woman’s “no” usually means “yes” or “maybe”.

As the film progresses, in the present day in the National Capital Region we meet Zoe and Veer (Aaryan). She appears to be Ali’s notion of what a millennial city-dwelling Indian female human is: she wears chhote-chhote shorts, wants men for sex but not love, says the word “career” a zillion times and uses “whatever” as an exclamation point. All these characteristics serve as superficial markers and nothing else. Veer pursues her with a loyal doggy expression on his face, and we are given to understand that he wants more than sex from her.

As Zoe begins to fall for him, she turns to an older man played by Hooda for advice and is dragged into flashbacks to his 1980s-90s romance with Leena in Udaipur and Delhi. You see, Hooda is the older version of Raghu who we first saw in his younger days played by Aaryan. Same guy who was being rebuked by Leena for stalking her and then further rebuked for agreeing not to do so. Confused? Just you wait, Henry Higgins, Love Aaj Kal has only begun.

In the Leena-Raghu plot from kal (yesterday), she may send mixed messages to him at first, but she has absolute clarity in her mind about what she wants. He does not. In the aaj (today) of the narrative, Zoe is muddled in the head, and views her professional dreams and personal feelings as mutually exclusive although Veer has at no point pressured her to choose between the two. The paavam fellow, on the other hand, is smitten and stricken and completely committed to her, but aiyyo she chews up his brain with her indecisiveness, while she and the older Raghu chew up our souls with all their philosophical mumbo-jumbo about pyaar, the burden placed on us by the mistakes of earlier generations, fidelity, human instincts and so on.

Gawd, how much do Zoe and Veer talk. They talk and they talk and they talk, and they go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth in their messed-up, mixed-up minds, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until I wanted to beg them to hook up.

Ms Khan has pizzazz and gives it her best shot, but even her striking screen presence cannot redeem this film. Mr Aaryan, on the other hand, is even worse than this script. Perhaps realising his acting limitations late in the day, at one point Ali gives Raghu a beard planted very carefully and precisely on the rim of his jaw and prosthetics to chubby up his face, hence distinguishing him from the scruffy, thin-looking Veer.

Post-interval, a stand-up comedian pops up to pontificate about how monogamous relationships have been imposed by society on men, who are naturally wired to wander and to keep their youknowwhats hanging out instead of confining them to their pants. Ah okay, so this is the point the film wishes to make? But wait, no, is it not Veer who is singularly focused on Zoe while SHE is shopping around? Whatever.

Love Aaj Kal is pretentious, verbose and thoroughly insufferable. Among its many contrivances is the use of Hooda’s voice playing in the background as the end credits roll, whispering sentences that are perhaps meant to be wise and impressive. I managed to catch the very last line as the very last word disappeared from the screen. “Romantic hai na kahaani?” I think I heard him ask. (The story is romantic, is it not?) The answer – if you have any doubts after reading this review so far – is an absolute, vehement, resounding no. That truth hurts though, because once upon a time jab Imtiaz Ali and Kareena Kapoor met, they did create screen magic.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 0.01

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	141 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/love-aaj-kal-movie-review-sara-ali-khan-is-saddled-with-kartik-aaryan-and-imtiaz-alis-mind-numbing-script-8040601.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Aaj_Kal_(2020_film)

REVIEW 760: CHHAPAAK

Release date:	January 10, 2020
Director:	Meghna Gulzar
Cast:	Deepika Padukone, Vikrant Massey, Madhurjeet Sarghi, Payal Nair, Chitranjan Tripathy, Geeta Agarwal, Manohar Teli, Vishal Dahiya, Ankit Bisht, Vaibhav Upadhyay, Delzad Hivale, Sharvari Deshpande, Ipshita Chakraborty
Language:	Hindi

Despite the standard disclaimer that appears at the start of pretty much every film these days (“any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental” etc), Chhapaak – as is evident from its promotions – is based on the true story of acid-attack survivor and activist Laxmi Agarwal. In the film she becomes Malti (played by Deepika Padukone) whose life changes forever one day when acid is thrown on her face. Malti is 19 at the time and Basheer Khan a.k.a. Babbu, a family friend, is 30. His motive: she had ignored his romantic overtures and was clearly involved with a boy in a neighbouring school. 

Director Meghna Gulzar’s film, which she has co-written with Atika Chohan, is far from being a conventional high-pitched melodrama. Chhapaak’s narrative style is largely documentary-like, leaving the horror of Malti’s reality to do its work on viewer emotions. Besides, when we are first introduced to the protagonist, it is with her damaged face, and only in the climactic moments of the film do we get to see her for what she once was. Through most of the running time then, it is impossible not to compare the corroded skin on screen with the beauty we know Padukone to be. The mere thought that one human being could do this to another, that scores of men continue to do this to women in India, is obviously shocking (and yes, dear offended MRAs, stats do show that the perpetrators are mostly men). Unfortunately, the film’s bid to be understated is stretched too far. 

Chhapaak means well, no doubt, but the screenplay is surprisingly thin – surprising because of Meghna’s brilliance with Raazi and Talvar. Combine that with plotline weaknesses, an excessive effort to stay low key and the unexpected shot at being a conformist fairytale in the end, and the result is a film that seems curiously detached from its heroine, despite the devastating true story that inspired it.

When Chhapaak (meaning: Splash) opens, we are in 2012 and Delhi is out on the streets protesting against a brutal gangrape on a bus. At this point, Malti has chosen to disappear from the public eye despite having earlier filed a high-profile PIL demanding a ban on the sale of acid in India. She soon starts working with an NGO for acid-attack survivors run by journalist-turned-activist Amol (Vikrant Massey). Thus begins her journey as the most visible face of this horrific crime in the country. 

Chhapaak’s narrative structure, which involves some back and forth in time, is slightly confusing. When did Malti stop being desperate for a job? When did rights-consciousness overcome her despair? What might have been a natural progression in a linear storyline comes across as swings in the state of mind of both the central figure and a couple of those around her because of the jagged timeline of events. 

This though is not the primary issue with Chhapaak. The primary issue is that while trying to avoid being high-decibel masala, it ends up seeming oddly uninvolved. 

Perhaps I have been spoilt for Chhapaak because just last year I watched – and loved and rewatched – the Mollywood film Uyare starring the wonderful Parvathy Thiruvothu as a woman whose controlling boyfriend throws acid on her face. That Malayalam film directed by Manu Ashokan managed to be subtle yet emotionally stirring, optimistic yet heart-rending. Chhapaak tries but fails to attain that fine balance.

The film does have its positives. Such as its unobtrusive background score by Shankar Ehsaan Loy and Tubby, and a gentle title track by SEL. Or that amusing, heart-warming conversation between two survivors about the kind of face that they want post-surgery. Or the solid courtroom arguments between two lawyers who are neither wolf-whistle-worthy in the Sunny “dhai kilo ka haath” Deol league nor the twerps we usually see in commercial Bollywood. Their intelligent exchanges are real, low-volume yet gripping. 

The winner among all the episodes in Chhapaak is the one where Malti in a celebratory mood has a face-off with Amol. The writing and acting in this scene are flawless.

The treatment of the villains’ Muslim identity too is interesting. The man behind the attack on the real-life Laxmi was Muslim, so too are the antagonist in Chhapaak and his accomplice, but they are portrayed factually in the film, not as ugly Muslim stereotypes of the sort that have pervaded Hindi cinema in the past couple of years. In the current political atmosphere in India, this was perhaps the trickiest part of the story and Meghna acquits herself well here. Not so smoothly done is a fleeting scene involving Malti’s brother and a member of Basheer Khan’s family.

(Alert: minor spoilers in the next four paragraphs)

Considering that Meghna’s handling of gender is usually faultless, it is surprising to see her go down a conventional path in Chhapaak’s finale. The last we see of Malti in her present-day avatar is of a man she loves acknowledging his own feelings for her. Read: the standard happily-ever-after of formulaic fairytales. A woman getting a man is the socially accepted definition of a happy ending because getting a man was and still is widely assumed to be every woman’s primary goal and ultimate achievement. In a changing world, where Hollywood has tossed convention out of the window in films like Frozen and Maleficent, and our very own Uyare refused to go down that well-worn road, it needs to be asked why Chhapaak alters Laxmi’s truth to fit this old straitjacket.

For a film that aims at realism, this and one other element are particularly jarring. You see, the real Laxmi did indeed fall in love with the founder of the NGO she worked with, they did enter into a relationship and even have a child together. The inconvenient ‘after’ to this ‘happily-ever-after’ that the film avoids though is that they soon broke up, and according to media reports, as of now she is a financially struggling single mother.

Everything else in Chhapaak is perhaps debatable, what is not is its portrayal of Malti being recruited as an anchor by Aaj Tak. Considering this media group’s reputation for wanting its female anchors to look like Fox-News-style models, this part of Chhapaak is almost laughable. It is unclear why the writers could not have thought up a fictional TV channel or, better still, come up with a more believable profession for Malti.

This passage in Chhapaak defies believability in another way. While Malti is giving an interview in Aaj Tak’s studio, a producer watching from the control room says “she is good”, and seconds later she has a job offer. Actually, Malti is particularly ineffective while answering questions in that scene. The writing and acting here are at their feeblest.

(Spoiler alert ends)

The fulcrum of Chhapaak is Padukone. The superstar, who also debuts as a producer with this film, has the benefit here of sensitive camerawork by Malay Prakash and prosthetic makeup that somewhat mirrors the real-life Laxmi’s appearance. This is a talented actor who managed to make a mark even in the horribly Islamophobic, misogynistic and clichéd Padmaavat in 2018. In Chhapaak, however, she is inconsistent. She does a good job of her present-day scenes, especially her hesitant flirtation with Amol. In the passage where she is shown as a teenaged school-goer though, she is decidedly awkward. 

The supporting cast is fair enough. The one actor who truly stands out in Chhapaak is Massey playing Amol. Hindi TV’s Darling Young Man, the sturdy Dev from Lootera (2013) and the loveable, troubled Shutu from A Death In The Gunj (2017) is all grown up and a really sexy man in Chhapaak. He is so hot, and his performance so nuanced, that it becomes easy to see why Malti would fall in love with the irritable Amol. 

The blend Massey achieves is what Chhapaak needed as a whole. Without that, what we are left with are good intentions, a heart in the right place, a major star taking a huge risk with an unorthodox role and a bunch of pluses that somehow do not come together to deliver an immersive experience.  

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.5

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	123 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/chhapaak-movie-review-deepika-padukones-acid-attack-saga-has-its-moments-but-not-enough-7881341.html

Poster courtesy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chhapaak