The stars are fine, the stunts are fine, the globetrotting is fine, the spy stuff is fine, the twists are fine – but the film’s big enemy is that it goes on and on. The rest of this review may contain spoilers.
I liked the first War installment quite a bit, and one of the nicest things about War 2 is that it deepens the world of Kabir, the globetrotting protagonist played by Hrithik Roshan. We get to know about his childhood, which returns to haunt him in a big way. We get to know that he has ties with Khalid’s mother from the first film. The Vaani Kapoor character’s daughter returns, and it’s fun to note that this young adult has inherited Kabir’s James Bond traits. Even the so-called romantic interest played by Kiara Advani (called Kavya) is not someone Kabir just met. They go back to when they were children, and they have someone in common. The director Ayan Mukerji and the writers (Shridhar Raghavan, Abbas Tyrewala) come with solid masala credentials. They could have just spun a new adventure with a new villain. Instead, they show us how the past never really leaves us, even if you are a rogue spy who cannot afford to have attachments.
NTR Jr. plays Kabir’s enemy, named Vikram. Now that Kabir’s gone rogue (we saw this at the end of the first part), Vikram should be one of the good guys at RAW, right? But like the earlier installments, War 2 likes to keep us guessing about its characters. Did the officer played by Anil Kapoor get his position only because a few powerful people made a few phone calls? Or is there more to him? The man himself says that one of the problems with this world of spies is that you cannot trust anyone. Another nice thing about the War universe is the way it treats its women. They are not the conventional leading ladies. If the first film made Kabir look horrible in the way he handled the Vaani Kapoor character, this installment begins with Kavya (a Wing Commander) getting a medal of excellence. She gets a hand combat sequence with Kabir as well as a duet, but their relationship does not proceed along expected lines. And I loved the detail about the ring she makes.
The action sequences are all imagined well, even if the execution sometimes does not match up and even if they are overlong. There’s a bit where a knife is used to anchor Vikram to an aircraft when it’s midair. He happens to be on top of it, naturally. It’s exactly the kind of outrageousness you want in a movie like this. The plot has to do with an outfit called Kali, which has impressively rendered holograms representing evil minds from various Asian nations. They have decided that democracy is a thing of the past, and they want to destabilise India. When they recruit Kabir, he says, “Tum mujhe naam do. Main tumhe laash doonga.” It’s the kind of masala line that works in the modern day. It has that old-world rhyme scheme, but it’s crisp. And Hrithik is totally at home, whether with lines like this one or with the action or when showing his naked pain when asked to kill someone he loves.
If Hrithik plays the suave gentleman-spy, NTR Jr. is positioned as someone at the other end of the economic spectrum. He grew up on the streets, and NTR Jr. (and the boy who plays the character as a child) embody this tapori-ness with full-on energy and charm. The parts where Hrithik and NTR Jr. face off are great fun. But this is where the film failed to convince me. I get that being poor and being emotionally betrayed as a child can turn you bitter. But will this turn you into a murderous psychopath? I am not saying this is impossible, but the film does not do a good job of convincing us about this transition. And it keeps changing its mind about Vikram. Is he a good guy or a bad guy? Can we kill off a big hero like NTR Jr., or do we resurrect him?
A bigger issue with War 2 is its flabbiness. The writing feels on point, but on screen, the scenes are given too much time to breathe and they go on and on. There are times the film tries to summon up the flavour of old-time masala cinema, and it does not sit well in this world. I found War 2 watchable, but there is always a sense of what it could have been. But one line really resonated with me. Despite Kabir’s tendency to save the world, he is a monster. Everyone who comes close to him ends up dead. We’ve heard this sentiment in earlier films about spies, but it hits hard here because you begin to think about the new relationships Kabir has brought into his life. There’s a lot of material for War 3 to build on.
