Ayan Mukerji’s War 2 has so many twists and turns spread across its 173-minute runtime that the film nearly pays homage to the OG filmmaker duo of Abbas-Mastan. Some of these twists are too on the nose to be believed, while others occur well-timed, leaving the viewer both disarmed and engaged (for a reasonably large part) in a B-movie sort of delight.
Both screenwriter Sridhar Raghavan and dialogue writer Abbas Tyrewala seem wise to the task of playing to a massive gallery as well as carving out a spy instalment with a semblance of agency and slickness. The campiness of their material is watered down by the wealth and the ambition that the YRF creative force boasts to ultimately create a something-for-all film, an equivalent of tomato ketchup or mayonnaise, if you will.
Hrithik Roshan returns as Major Kabir, and he is once again off the grid, albeit with the bold caveat that it is all for a much greater cause. In War, the 2019 film directed by Siddharth Anand, Kabir going rogue prompted Colonel Luthra (Ashutosh Rana) to assign his protégé and dance partner Khalid (Tiger Shroff) on his tail, with the duo eventually joining forces to track down a dreaded international arms dealer. The question of loyalty hovered over this operation that threw some convenient yet startling surprises to lend the term War a surprisingly layered meaning: while the enemy at the gates stays obvious as ever, could you blindly trust your own comrades?
The stakes remain the same in War 2and replacing Shroff’s Khalid is Telugu superstar NTR Jr in the role of Vikram Chelapathi, a hotshot war hero with the middle name ‘confidence’. With Luthra out of the way and Vikrant Kaul (Anil Kapoor, sleepwalking through his dull role) assuming control of the R&AW, Vikram comes to the fore to catch the high-flying Kabir and get to the bottom of a syndicate of global oligarchs named Kali through him. Kiara Advani’s (as Wing Commander Kavya) personal reasons obligate her to tag along with Vikram, but we know very well that the romance she promises will soon wilt in front of the bigger bromance on the cards.
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As a side note, it is interesting how War 2 reimagines India’s place at the global power table, with the shadowy cartel Kali seemingly capturing the nation’s real-life ascent to prominence. The presence of multiple antagonists from across the world, including one from within, suggests that the country has shifted (in the eyes of the makers) from being the routine target of individual malice to becoming the singular focus of a global conspiracy. Yet, as much as the film flimsily tackles this idea of superpower diplomacy, it nevertheless centres on the more personal.
And personal it gets, quite to the Salim-Javed with the help of a thunderous flashback and whatnot. In the murkiness of stunning locales, sculpted bodies, action sequences, mixed-bag visual effects, and more, the film almost forgets to connect us to the emotional crux of the narrative, until the post-interval portion puts things somewhat in context. It’s a significant portion, even if executed heavy-handedly and without much timeline logic, which shows how Kabir and Vikram have always shared a symbiotic relationship and how their current situation is tethered to a touchy past. Echoes of Namak haraam (1973), Deewar (1975), To friend (1980) and the like are loud in War 2which unflinchingly dishes out sentimentality under its glossy packaging.
Unlike Tiger Shroff, NTR Jr carries the baggage of superstardom, and Ayan Mukerji and Shridhar Raghavan were always going to be burdened with offering the right platform to the actor and his throbbing fanbase. Consequently, the cat-and-mouse game between Kabir and Vikram is laced with constant one-upmanship that resists declaring a winner at any point, be it during the huge action block set in picturesque Spain or the mandatory dance jugalbandi to a curious, subpar-sounding qawwali electronica number. Hrithik Roshan is clearly the leader of the franchise, but any disservice to the RRR actor would seem unpardonable, and War 2 somehow toes the line of doing justice to both stars.
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The problem, though, is that practically everything else in the film is obligatory. From the central geopolitical conflict and the romance blooming between Kavya and Kabir, to the existence of the film itself, feel like placeholders for the two snazzy superstars to ride on. NTR’s character carries immense potential, given the wounds he carries from the past and how they manifest in defining his personality in the present. But the film digs only skin-deep and never allows the manic rage that he verbally pronounces to show in action. Hrithik Roshan, too, gets slightly lost in his character’s self-styled persona and ends up repeating himself with his trademark struts, dance moves and smoulders. As for the rest of the cast, one hopes that they were at least compensated well enough for their poorly written roles.
Would War 2 be a proverbial missed opportunity then? That depends on the expectations you carried and how much you wished a filmmaker like Ayan Mukerji would manage to infuse his sensibilities into the risk-averse franchise narrative. Mukerji, unfortunately, buckles under the demands of a homogenised creative environment, and nothing about the film really bears his stamp on it. Even Pritam, quite in form at the moment, delivers a forgettable soundtrack as the film goes about checking off its tall list without ever allowing him, or anyone else, to showcase any distinctiveness. In comparison, War (2019) had a more compelling storyline as well as a broader scope for actors and technicians to shine. Patchily entertaining but predictable at large, War 2 is strictly for the die-hard fans.
