REVIEW 446: FORCE 2

Release date:	November 18, 2016
Director:	Abhinay Deo
Cast: Language:	John Abraham, Sonakshi Sinha, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Adil Hussain, Narendra Jha, Patricia Mittler Hindi

It is hard to find a film that does not promise an iota more of anything than what it intends to deliver, and then efficiently delivers on its promise. Force 2 is an intense action flick that serves up slick stunts and technical finesse to support its straight-laced storytelling style.

Director Abhinay Deo’s latest film is a sequel to Nishikant Kamat’s Force (2011), which starred John Abraham and Genelia D’souza. That film in turn was a remake of the 2003 Tamil blockbuster Kaakha Kaakha directed by Gautham Menon, starring Suriya Sivakumar and Jyothika. Force did not have Kaakha Kaakha’s emotional heft, but it did have gripping, not-before-seen action plus a villain worth living and dying for. Its Achilles heel was the casting of the heroine. Four years since Force, the franchise repeats the mix, giving us gripping action once again, a solid villain and a contentious heroine.

Abraham is back in Force 2 as a well-intentioned Mumbai policeman who does not play by the book because the book, in his opinion, can tie a good cop down. In the years since Yashvardhan lost his wife (played by D’souza) in the first film, he has remained as strong-willed, impertinent and determined to vanquish evil as he was back then. When a bunch of agents of the Indian intelligence agency RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) are exterminated in well-planned back-to-back killings, Yash enters the picture to find out why and to prevent further deaths.

The case lands him in beautiful Budapest. His partner and supposed boss in this mission is RAW officer KK, Kamaljit Kaur, played by Sonakshi Sinha. KK is to the always-defiant Yash what chalk is to cheese, so of course they clash repeatedly. 

Together, they find themselves up against an antagonist who somehow manages to stay ahead of them every step of the way. Shiv Sharma (Tahir Raj Bhasin) is driven by an unexplained grouse against RAW and India. It is evident from the moment we meet him that Yash and KK will solve the case when they crack the reason for his animosity.

The purposefulness of this film’s writing is both its strength and its weakness. Parveez Shaikh and Jasmeet K. Reen are here to entertain us with suspense and unrelenting skirmishes – involving wit, guns and fisticuffs – and they do that well. If only they had paid more attention to the characterisation of Yash and KK, Force 2 would have been more than just that.

Yash relies almost entirely on our pre-existing investment in him from the previous film, on Abraham’s dimpled charm and the actor’s unapologetic willingness to be objectified without denting his dignity in the way Hindi cinema tends to do with women. However, we do not see enough of the character’s journey here, nothing much to add to the Yash we already know from Force.

The film’s potentially most interesting element is the most problematic. Leading ladies in Hindi cinema are rarely in positions of authority over leading men, and they are certainly rarely at the centre of hard-core action cinema. KK, then, is a fascinating proposition. Having envisioned her though, the writers give her short shrift.

Sections of Bollywood these days are taking a long, hard look at the way women have been straitjacketed in films since the 1970s. While some are ushering in genuine change, too many are struggling to pull themselves out of the morass of their own misogyny. Sinha earlier this year starred in Akira, which made a woman the central figure in an all-out action-reliant drama but then spent so little time on fleshing her out as a human being, that the most engaging character in the film turned out to be her arch enemy – who was a man ... of course. Deo & Co are better in the sense that their KK is not a one-line concept note. We do get to see her for the person that she is. Still, she is a RAW agent who screws up on an important assignment in a way you know the male lead of this kind of Hindi film would not, and when it comes to the crunch, she still needs a man to be decisive on her behalf and have the last word.

The saving grace of the Yash-KK equation is that despite the hint of a romance between them, the film does not go too far in that direction. This is a good thing, since Sinha looks like a child in comparison with Abraham. The actress does a fair job of what she is given to do, but I wish she had been given more to do and the screenplay had been less patronising towards KK.

The best written character in Force 2 is Shiv Sharma, a criminal who is both cold-blooded and nuanced, a man we can fear yet empathise with without the film getting too maudlin in its portrayal of him. Tahir Raj Bhasin is wonderfully controlled in his execution of Shiv, making him as intriguing as Vidyut Jamwal’s Vishnu was in Force yet completely different.

Bhasin earlier delivered an excellent performance as Rani Mukerji’s bête noir in Mardaani (2014). Hopefully we will not have to wait another two years to see him again on the big screen.

Although Force 2’s USP is its action, it is not an all-brawn-no-brain venture. The film does raise a significant emotive point about intelligence gathering. When people sign up to spy on behalf of a country, they are aware that if found out, the very country they seek to serve will disown them. An espionage agent may accept that professional hazard as part of the game, but is there a way of serving the greater national good without writing people off? 

Force 2 brings up this question gently in the narrative without any chest-thumping, then lets itself down with the needless mush in the text flashing on screen in the end, text that comes across as an afterthought in a bid to tap into the loud mindlessness of the ‘patriotic’ herd that has dominated public discourse in India in the past couple of years.

Until that point though, the film is nicely matter-of-fact in its discussion on national interest. It is also such a relief to see Force 2’s portrayal of RAW when contrasted with the amateurishness of the spy story in last year’s Akshay Kumar-starrer Baby directed by Neeraj Pandey.

Force 2 is not earth-shatteringly memorable, but it is fun. Abhinay Deo must share a large part of the credit for that with action director Franz Spilhaus, cinematographers Mohana Krishna and Imre Juhasz who make us participants in the proceedings, Amitabh Shukla & Sanjay Sharma’s sharp editing and the doggedness of John Abraham’s bath towel that does not get dislodged from his waist until the very end of an extended, physically challenging fight. 

This is the kind of film we Bollywood buffs like to call paisa vasool.

Rating (out of five stars): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	127 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/force-2-review-slick-mix-of-action-john-abraham-suspense-and-an-appealing-villain-3111702.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/Force2TheFilm/

Stills courtesy: Spice PR

REVIEW 344: PHANTOM

Release date:	August 28, 2015
Director:	Kabir Khan
Cast: Language:	Saif Ali Khan, Katrina Kaif, Zeeshan Ayyub, Sohaila Kapur Hindi

It is not profound. It is far from being a work of genius. And the screenplay is not of the kick-ass variety you would expect from a fictionalised Indian fantasy about a plot to kill the masterminds of the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai (based on S. Hussain Zaidi’s book Mumbai Avengers).

Still, Phantom is fun when it’s being a matter-of-fact thriller instead of a mushy patriotic drama. As it happens, it is not mushy for the most part, the action is slick and twists come flying thick and fast, leaving us with little time while the film is on to reason out whether they are credible.

Saif Ali Khan holds it all together, playing Daniyal Khan, a disgraced ex-Armyman who is recruited by India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) for a mission – not authorised by the government – to eliminate the 26/11 kingpins. RAW’s chief is persuaded to take up the project by an over-zealous new joinee (Zeeshan Ayyub). Daniyal is a phantom of sorts since he virtually disappeared after his exit from the forces, making him ideal for the project: he is keen to regain his honour, but if he dies while on duty no one would know and even less people would care. 

And so he agrees to avenge 26/11, travelling from the UK to the US, Syria and Pakistan in the bargain. Help comes in the form of ex-RAW hand and current international security consultant, Nawaz Mistry (Katrina Kaif), sundry RAW plants and an unexpected Pakistani ally.

Saif in Phantom has put behind him Agent Vinod (2012) in which he looked like an amateur playing Cops ‘n’ Robbers with toy guns. He is believable as a secret agent in this one. His demeanour here harks back to his performance in 2004 in a far superior film, Ek Hasina Thi.

The supporting cast is a mixed bag, the highlight being Sohaila Kapur as an old Pakistani nurse. The jingoistic elements in Phantom revolve around the RAW officer played by Zeeshan Ayyub who is served poorly by the writing. His character gets almost all the film’s predictable, chest-thumpingly patriotic dialogues and scenes – a pity because this talented actor deserves better. 

I couldn’t help but wonder what Priyanka Chopra or Anushka Sharma might have done with the better-written role of Nawaz Mistry, but since it is Katrina that we’ve got, it must be said that her limitations as an actress are somewhat neutralised in Phantom by director Kabir Khan’s ability to tap into a certain comfort level she has developed with the camera over the years. He does it here while also not allowing the camera to obsess over her pretty face as it does in most of her films.

As for her character, it’s interesting to see a Hindi film giving us an uncaricatured Parsi. It’s interesting too to see an Indian Muslim hero in a story in which no one delivers a sermon on secularism in the context of his faith, as is the norm with Hindi films featuring significant Muslim characters. Clearly a point is being made with Daniyal being a Khan, but the messaging is unspoken, which is nice. Of course it would be nicer still for us to get more films where a character’s Muslim-/Sikh-/Christian-/Parsi-ness is not an element in the plot. Muslims, Parsis and all minorities are people, you know. They exist, and a screenplay should not feel compelled to justify their presence in a story. That’s why Nawaz in Phantom is a small milestone.

It’s odd that Haafiz Saeed’s name is disguised as Haariz Saeed in the film, since David Coleman Headley is called David Coleman Headley. That’s not the only question mark. Since the RAW chief was authorising the operation despite a vehement no from the Home Minister, it’s unclear how he could guarantee to Daniyal that he would be reinstated in the Army and his honour restored, if the job was completed successfully. Was he lying? It didn’t seem so. Is the implication then that the Union Cabinet would fall in line once the mission was aced? Well then, Pakistani commentators have routinely suggested that RAW is as much of a mischief-maker as the ISI across the border which our people say has a stranglehold over the Pakistan government, so it’s laughable that an Indian film implying as much has been banned there.  

For those concerned about Phantom cashing in on public bloodlust, the film carefully positions its mission as one designed to save India and Pakistan from going to war. The script is at pains to point out that while Indians suffer because of Pakistani terrorists, thousands of Pakistanis too die as a result of home-grown terror. Underlining the point is one of Daniyal’s co-conspirators: a Pakistani who experienced a great personal loss at the hands of the terrorists Daniyal is targeting.

Where jingoism does rear its head in the film, it is brief and too bland, even silly to be worrisome in the way the ending of Nikhil Advani’s D-Day was. In fact, these portions pull Phantom down with cliched, flag-waving dialogues and a painfully long-drawn-out, emotionally manipulative climax. Sans this, it could have been a neat, audacious action thriller despite its lack of depth.

Audacity can lead to realities stranger than fiction. If before 9/11, Hollywood had made a film about men flying planes into New York’s World Trade Centre, would we have believed it? Pre-26/11, if an Indian director had made a film about foreigners casually entering Mumbai by sea through unguarded beaches, gunning down ordinary citizens at sundry locations in the city and laying siege to a 5-star hotel for days, would we not have laughed it off? Viewed in that context, Phantom is not really as improbable as it seems when we analyse it at an intellectual level.

Sure it lacks depth and is, therefore, not particularly memorable, a far cry from Kabir’s recent Bajrangi Bhaijaan. Phantom is what we Indians call “timepass”. Considering the subject matter, it should have been more, but as it is, it’s what we Indians additionally call a “one-time watch”.

Rating (out of five): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	147 minutes

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_(2015_film)