To begin with the gist, the team at YRF does it again post the major debacle of THUGS OF HINDOSTAN, but this time they do it with style heavily banking on the WAR between their two leading men Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff. The film has almost no one else in its entire lengthy duration of 156 minutes and the icons thankfully manage to lift it up to the level of watchable, because of their (various) timely entries and superbly shot action sequences reminding you of the famous MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and JAMES BOND series of the west.
So in case your definition of a star-studded action film has only the icons coming together offering continuous action sequences thrown one after another; you have no issues with the loads of inane creative liberties taken and you also don’t mind ‘the now routine absence’ of a solid villain in our films solely focusing on the stars, then WAR might work for you featuring your favourite icons. Moreover, you might also enjoy the director taking you to the various locations of the world (in a bizarre manner), presenting some well-shot action sequences as the only USP of the much hyped mega-budget film.
However if you are the one (like myself) expecting some novel, fresh writing from the film, unfolding an exciting plot with two of the most popular icons, engaging you throughout till the very end, then WAR has nothing of that sort to be brutally honest. And that’s majorly because it simply follows the same old repetitive template, not giving any kind of weightage to the supporting cast, releasing on a festival weekend, yet again hiking the ticket prices to exploit its opening weekend.
Further clearing the doubts, neither the weak baddies (who once used to be the backbone of our action-crime thrillers) nor the women characters get much to do in the film getting completely overshadowed by the two lead stars. The emotional sub-plot in the storyline (of a traitor father and a daughter) never makes you feel the emotions, the repetitive love-plot (featuring a cameo of Vani Kapoor) ends before it begins and one never feels any scare or urgency of catching the typical Muslim terrorists talking about the same heard before things yet again. Putting it differently, the film gives an impression as if YRF sacked all in its writing department to accomodate more action directors.
Perhaps thats the reason the team once again comes up with a routine subject and cliched sequences already seen in many earlier films (like in AYYARI), which do not work despite having some interesting twists and turns in the beginning and post intermission. Having said that, its major twist (not revealed here in the review) also doesn’t really work, as it happens to be the most bizarre last resort of the writers - whenever they cannot think of anything else in a crime-spy-thriller.
Personally speaking, this kind of twist used to be an utterly foolish and disappointing one for me, in films as well as in crime-fiction writings and I always used to stop reading the moment something of this sort happened in a novel (even if it was written by a highly reputed author). So when the same got revealed in WAR, I could do nothing but laugh, thinking about the way viewers are taken for granted by our mainstream cinema. To give you a hint, a similar twist was recently there in a highly popular Spanish crime thriller too, which was also remade in Hindi. And that one twist took away a lot of magic from that World Cinema gem as mentioned in its review at BTC.
Hopefully you will agree and realize the same, once you get to know that major twist after watching the film.
But wait, apart from the so casually written, silly scene of Vani Kapoor and her pen drive, there is another laughable insertion in WAR towards its end too and that’s the reference of a powerful missile launched by the terrorists targeting Indian Territory. This one inclusion again made me smile thinking about the childish writing approved by YRF (in the present era of OTT platforms) and the few funny words said by two young teenagers sitting next to me revealed it all.
Summing up, no complaints from either Hrithik or Tiger as they both did their best, exploiting their charm, creating a riot, especially in the action and road-bike chase sequence in particular shot extremely well. But the film offers nothing new or fresh as content, becoming a major disappointment. To be fair, I only enjoyed the spirited entries of the stars, their swag, one thrilling chase sequence and the dance number featuring both the dancing icons but nothing else.
Frankly, this was not the film expected from one of the biggest production houses of the country, as their mega venture coming after TOH, with two talented heartthrobs of the nation enacting on an entirely jaded script. WAR is not THUGS OF HINDOSTAN for sure, but it’s just better than that or much lesser bad in comparison, putting it precisely.
In short, though WAR will still work making a killing at the box-office due to the millions of fans of both Hrithik and Tiger, but this is not the WAR I was looking forward to.
Ending on a thoughtful note, every such big film has surely got its share of both positives and negatives.
But the moment we start rating an 'Average' or a ‘Lesser Bad’ film as ‘A Good One’ due to the obvious biases, our very definition of ‘Good’ starts deteriorating leading to a complete distortion.
जब हम 'औसत' या 'कम ख़राब' को 'अच्छा' कहना शुरू कर देते हैं, बस उसी दिन से हमारी 'अच्छे' की परिभाषा का स्तर गिरता जाता है।
Give that a thought!
Rating: 2.5 / 5 (Including additional 0.5 just for the splendid efforts put in by both Hrithik and Tiger in their breathtaking action sequences)
Note: WAR got released on 2nd October, on a Wednesday to enjoy a five day long weekend and they yet again increased the prices taking an unfair advantage of a National Holiday.
This is exactly the practice BTC has been opposing since many years.
To be specific, (clearing the confusion of many), higher ticket prices at multiplexes - is one thing that can still be accepted as per the quality services offered. But increasing the prices every time a big film comes on festivals and holiday weekends is sheer exploitation of the ticket buyers and nothing else. Ironically the entire consumer product industry offers discounts on festivals, holidays and big events, but multiplexes increase their prices at such times exploiting their own customers.
So as per BTC tradition one star gets deducted from every such film’s ratings due to the timely increased prices taking the viewers for granted.
Therefore
NET Ratings of WAR: 2.5 (Less 1) / 5
