Soft-core gay porn.
Yes, I said it. And while Edwin Starr probably was galaxies away in his rendition of that song, Siddharth Anand was definitely influenced by the great porn directors of our time when he made 'War'. More on that a little later... This was a movie which was, to be absolutely honest, not half bad, in fact even in its present avatar, War is good enough not to be featured in this blog which is really an homage to the worst of the worst.
That said, Anand, like many of his Bollywood peers, suffers from that dreaded disease heroes-must-look-cool-itis. And that ultimately is the downfall of this film but of course the numbers will say otherwise. Even as I write this on Sunday night, War has broken the box office record of highest opening day collections of ~51 Crores as it were. For a movie whose budget was 200 Crores, War has crossed that in less than a week so a hit by all means is a hit and everyone associated with this film will take it. And yet, this film could have been so much better! Alright onto the breakdown...
SYNOPSIS:-
Hrithik Roshan aka Kabir (btw why is Kabir such a popular name for leads in Indian spy/thriller type shows/movies??) is an Indian super spy who's gone rogue because... No, I will not tell you because I suffered and you should too. Builds character as a friend once said. Anyway, Kabir's shenanigans are not pleasing the top brass so they send out his former protégé, the completely jacked, even-my-guns-have-guns, Student of the Year 2.5 and earnest af Khalid played by Tiger Shroff, to take Kabir out. Now if this movie had to be condensed, you could probably get it done in under an hour. But a Hindi feature film with 50 kilos of action and two of the hottest actors in the industry cannot have a run time of less than a couple of hours or 154 mins as it is in this film. So obviously flashbacks for each of the leads, together and separately, must happen.
Now even for someone with half a brain cell, Kabir is quite obviously not a deshdrohi and has his reasons for going rogue which are soon found out by Khalid and the student and the master team up and go guns ablazin' to get the real bad guys. There's some other stuff in there about a mission gone wrong and Vaani Kapoor in a blink-n-miss-but-we'll-still-get-you-into-a-song kinda role and our Indian spies being just oh-so-cool which is laughable at first and then gets annoying later.
Like I said before, this movie could have been a legit Indian action flick which set the standard for years to come. I mean let's not kid ourselves. War, even with good editing and keeping it under the 2 hour mark, would not be a Jason Bourne. BUT it could easily have been a gritty spy action thriller which we could have been proud of. Lekin nahi, hum sunne aur samajhne walon mein se nahi so director-saheb chooses to keep the "coolth" going and loads it with extra ham and extra extra cheese.
THE ALMOST-PORN ELEMENT:-
All those slo-mo shots of the first hero's entry and the second and when they meet each other and when they face off against each other, I mean add some deep breathing and moans too, why don't you?! A friend who was watching the film with me was of the same opion and I quote "Tiger looked like he wanted to fuck Hrithik...". To be fair, I thought that when they stood eye-to-eye and gazed deeply into each other's souls, you could almost hear the zippers going down.
The highlight of all this homo-eroticism was a scene in the latter half of the film. Their female team mate is getting married and in the middle of all of that has time to decrypt some drive. As Hrithik thanks her, she jokingly goes, "If you say yes, I'll dump the man I just married a few minutes back and get hitched with you." And to which Tiger on the side scoffs and very seriously says, "Yeah right, get in line...". Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.
So despite a lot of cock-teasing, nothing porny came to fruition leaving I'm sure millions of boys and girls quite disappointed.
PISS-OFF ELEMENT:-
That whole 'we have to be cool' element which is the driving force of this and every other big budget film that comes out these days. In trying to look cool, both leads often look smug or smirky through the film. Matlab main Mr. India aur Rajnikant bhi... It didn't have to be this way.
Not a pissoff but a mere annoyance I suppose... In getting Hritik and Tiger, director ka budget lagta hai exhaust ho gaya and he had to settle for no-name villains. A hero or heroes look mightier when they have a takkar-wala villain to go up against. The guy was competent but no shiver-me-timbers wala feel was happening. Then again we wouldn't want the villain to steal the show now right?! Grow a pair Bollywood...
NICE COMMENT:-
Quite a few actually. Given that seven countries were featured in the film, there are some fantastic visuals. The action is comparable to any Hollywood movie from recent times which also works against War because in many of the action sequences, you get the feeling that you've seen it before and you probably have in Avengers, Mission Impossible and so on.
I quite liked the background score especially in the action and chase sequences. There are only 2 or maybe 3 songs in this action film thankfully although their insertion are a bit clueless and abrupt.
The female member of the spy team played by Anupriya Goenka... very pretty girl and decent acting chops too (not necessarily going by just this film though) and my South Indian heart skipped a beat when they show her wearing that classic white and gold Kerala kasavu saree in one of the scenes.
RATING:-
A solid 4 penises had it been a proper gay porn soft-core flick but seeing as it didn't go through on that front...
**.5 - All said and done 2 of those stars definitely go to Hrithik and Tiger. Half a star for the action which is terrific for an Indian movie but given how many superhero and action films we've seen from Hollywood, it's a case of been there done that.
Aah this made me giggle...
