Pathaan Review

In the end, no one cared about that orange bikini.

If you've been living under a rock and haven't followed the quasi-religious uproar over a Pathaan song about "besharam" colours where Deepika Padukone just so happens to wear saffron for about 10 seconds - well, bless that rock and stay put. Calls for boycotting and vandalism that preceded Pathaan, the latest film from the Yash Raj Spy Universe that brought us Tiger and War, only served to collectively become the best publicity campaign the movie could have hoped for. You see, hungama and hatred sell more tickets than fandom these days. Ironically, Pathaan's story bends over backward to be politically (and geopolitically) correct.

Shahrukh Khan plays Pathaan, an absolute charmer of a field operative for the Indian government. His latest mission is to find and stop Jim (John Abraham), the devilish and suave leader of a mercenary organization, X, that plans to launch a terror attack on India at the behest of a rogue Pakistani General. To get to Jim, Pathaan must contend with Jim's honeytrap - a Pakistani doctor-turned-ISI agent Rubia (Deepika Padukone), whose real allegiances are a flip-flopping mystery. What follow are standard-issue action thriller stunts that find the trio dangling off helicopters, breaking into unbreakable safes, doing wheelies on a frozen Siberian lake, and zipping across the sky in Falcon-wing lookalikes as they try to one-up each other.

It's dazzling stuff - these stunts - but only in that aseptically stylized way of Hollywood thrillers (Fast & Furious, James Bond) that leaves little room for human emotions to blossom and thus for the audience to really care about the characters.

Before I further diss the stylistic notes of the film, I must first acknowledge writer-director Siddharth Anand for bringing back what's lately gone missing from nationalistic cinema: tolerance. Pakistan is the punching bag of choice in all our political action thrillers, but at least Pathaan makes a distinction between the Country and its People. Rubia is a Pakistani, but her motivation to fight for her people is just as pure as that of Pathaan. (Plus, she is super hot.)

Pathaan's story navigates a landmine of sensitive issues in two distinctly effective ways. First, by embracing a strain of nationalism that is so unbridled and wholesome that taking offense at the plot would almost seem unpatriotic. In Pathaan's world, the Indian identity trumps all the other facets of one's persona. Take, for example, the intentional ambiguity in the names and backgrounds of the main characters. The protagonist is not named Shiva or Ram. He is Pathaan, an orphan who is bestowed the Pashtun honorific by the people of an Afghanistani village when he saves them from a missile. If you're a religious zealot, good luck trying to figure out how to hate this man.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, there are no fringe ideologies at play. Jim is not some extremist loony. He has a personal vendetta against India - one that he articulates with such lucidity that you understand his twisted mind, even empathize with him. Same too with Rubia, the ISI agent who has a gruesome origin story of her own. (And did I say she is super hot?)

Pathaan may be infused with the Republic Day theme of Jai Hind by way of pop-patriotic slogans ("ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country") but what hold the strings of the plot in place are the personal stories of family and loss. If only Pathaan spun a thicker emotional web with these threads, I might have actually been moved to tears at all those places where it wanted me to be in tears. Instead, it was too caught up with trying to out-style and out-stunt every Hollywood action blockbuster of recent times.

To be fair, the movie's high-octane sequences are actually quite sexy, in large part thanks to the sheer charisma of the cast. And they are remarkably well-shot. But the strangely depopulated locales - we see literally no other human in Dubai or Moscow while the characters do crazy shenanigans in public, like Jim pulling two helicopters with a rope - along with the exquisitely-calibrated cinematography make much of the movie look like a high-end video game. The plot is broken into a series of cute quests that Pathaan must win to "jump to the next level": save the scientists (+5 points); get the vial (+20 points); find the orb (+100 points); press that big-red button... you get it. When he's out of juice, Tiger bhai (Salman Khan) drops in for a quick boost - and *bleep bloop* PATHAAN respawns!

Salman's cameo is one of the better ones he's done in recent memory (the Godfather one was cringe) - the chemistry between him and SRK tops even that shared by SRK and Deepika. In fact, I didn't care much for the heavy flirtation and innuendos that Pathaan and Rubia frequently engage in - this, despite Deepika looking so stunning that Siddharth Anand deploys her seductions to advance the plot at every opportunity he gets. Rubia's character is actually crucial to the intrigue of the story, but what can I say, beauty is both a blessing and a curse, and it makes it hard to reach around the word "hot" and find other ways she impressed me.

Shahrukh will rightly get all the laurels for "reviving Bollywood" with his magnetism and flair as Pathaan, but let's give a moment's notice to John Abraham who plays Jim exactly as was needed. While SRK brings his characteristic playfulness, John balances it out by being resolute and humourless. They make a good match, although the final showdown between them ends up being a ptooey.

Pathaan is yet another instance of when the actual movie reveals all the pre-release circus to be a big fat nothing burger. When the end credits roll and secret agents Pathaan and Tiger (but also SRK and Sallu Bhai) come together for one final chuckle-and-chat, you wonder what all the offense-taking was for. Just take a chill pill and enjoy it.