Hrithik Roshan And Jr. NTR face off:-
Ever since the announcement of this film, I have been so bloody anxious on what the end product is going to be like. That coupled with YRF’s hush-hush strategy on what it wants to release had me even more curious. For anyone who remembers what went down in 2019, YRF executed the same strategy with War. A teaser randomly drops and most people exclaimed that they had no idea that Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff were even doing a movie together.
Even though I was not a fan of the film, and I believe it went all over the place especially with its plastic surgery subplot and a corn villain, it would be undeniable that the movie boasted of some of the most slick action choreography and shots in a commercial action movie in Bollywood.
Hrithik Roshan and Kabir oozed confidence and swagger, Tiger Shroff shined in the action sequences and even surprised many with his rendition of Khalid and the dancer within me was absolutely cheering seeing both of them shake a leg on the dance floor. Ever since the monstrous success of War in 2019, the YRF spy universe has only grown from strength to strength, with some minor bumps, both in scale and the box office revenue it is pulling in.
Pathan and Tiger 3 presented two of the biggest stars dealing with a nemesis in their own movies and helping each other out, but we got hints of Kabir in both the films. In Pathan, we got to know that Kabir was Jim’s partner during his time in RAW, both agents similar in attitude and style, but Jim’s eagerness and impulsiveness during a mission against Somali Empire. A better of a student style, but Jim’s eagerness and impulsiveness during a mission against Somalian pirates got the better of him, leading to his family’s death and animosity against the intelligence agency in India.
It’s important to note that by the end of war, Kabir is declared a traitor in India, and he describes to Colonel Luthra in the end that he will be the most effective when working outside the system versus in it, as he can take advantage of the fact that most enemies of the state would believe that he can be bought if the mission is aimed against India.
An important glimpse, however, was in the conclusion of Tiger 3, where we saw Colonel Luthra, played by Ashutosh Rana, providing instructions to Kabir about his next mission, a mission so grave and sensitive that someone should not ask his own soldiers or their son. When describing this new enemy against India, we saw Hrithik Roshan as Kabir become one with the shadows, moving through a dark alley, beating his enemies, as Luthra states, the new villain as someone so dangerous and evil, having no name, and living amongst the shadows, so much so that Kabir will have to embody him to beat him.
Luthra claiming that on this journey of trying to defeat this enemy, Kabir may have to explore the depths of evil and darkness, go against his own morality, that he may eventually never be able to forgive himself, ending the ultimatum by saying, ” kyunki kahin aisa na ho ki khud hi shaitaan se ladte ladte, tum khud hi shaitaan ban jao.”
I won’t deny it, I was hyped, pumped, and ready in every way possible, and ever since it was announced that Hrithik Roshan may be going up against Junior NTR on this journey, there was no stopping this movie from becoming the film of 2025 that I will be seated for on the first day and first show. When you get two powerhouses of some of the strongest industries in the country, you can’t screw up that opportunity.
The level of concern first arose when it was being deliberated on who is going to take the mammoth task of directing this film. There was a staleness that was creeping in with Siddharth Anand-directed films, as after War, he executed a similar template with Pathan, and something that we saw even with a serious topic like Fighter.
The template of action set pieces with sporadic breaks of song and dance, and I think it was a wise decision by Hrithik Adhopra to allow for new voices behind the camera within the same viral spy universe. While it bear fruit in the case of hiring talents like Alia Pasapur after Kabir Khan, it did not really work out with Manish Sharma for the third Tiger film. When it was announced that Ayaan Mukherjee will direct War 2, it was met with immediate scepticism.
Can Ayaan really handle such pressure? Can he really prove himself after all the criticism that was flung his way during Brahmapra? All of these thoughts and comments creeped in.
And I can say, the scepticism is justified, because I finished watching this teaser, and I can’t begin to tell you on how mixed and jumbled up my thoughts are, and how I am slightly underwhelmed as well.
Let me break it down for all of you why I am slightly concerned, and why I can’t really confidently say this may turn out to become a banger. VFX dependence. The technical dependence on visually rendered backgrounds is egregious in this teaser. If you were to create a comparative analysis of simply how the film looks visually to even War, the teaser that just dropped has such an artificial setting approach, where it generally seems like major portions of the action set pieces of the film have been executed in Mumbai in a curious way.
But if you were to take a more stale approach to a film that should essentially be about intelligence agents fighting crime across the globe, what should give the tonality of this film?…countries, more or less, gives the visual tonality of just green screens.
The backgrounds lack texture, and this leads to many of the sequences not looking exhilarating, but fake. The sequences of Junior NTR running on top of the train remind you of Ram Charan’s Boyapati collaboration, and that’s not really a compliment. Every exterior shot of the film looks like it’s being executed with green screens, and that may be a huge demerit of the film. I mean, looking at the last sequence where both the characters engage in hand-to-hand combat while being surrounded by ice, looks straight out of Ice Age vs.
A Real Location. The only sequence that actually looks slick and exciting is Hrithik engaging in combat with a sword with his crazy eyes, an indication of the psychotic form Kabir may have fully embraced. Other than that, the teaser generally was a sword to the eyes because of its heavy dependence on digital backgrounds. Borrowed editing pattern.
There is no marking of Ayaan Mukherjee, the director, in this teaser. It’s an extension of the markings of what we have already seen, and when it was sold to us that different directors will bring their own renditions to these characters, we expected a unique quality. You remember the flip of the script on how Dark World was so different from Ragnarok, or how Captain America was so different from Winter Soldier? This freshness calls for more excitement. It seems to be lacking here. Lack of background score. War, even with its teaser and no dialogues, was more effective in its output of generating hype for the film.
The editing pattern of the teaser was carefully crafted with the score, and when you even see the teaser of Pathan, it’s brilliantly edited to the score of Shah Rukh Khan’s action choreography. However, in this case, War 2 relies on the same background score of the first War film, and just like the previous point, it lacks any unique quality. There is not an exhilarating background score that pumps you, it’s not entirely edited to the visuals or beat, and most importantly, the VFX-dependent frames really give it an artificial quality that concerns me. Compelling and interesting looks.
I must say that Hrithik Roshan looks absolutely badass in the frames of the teaser, the scruffy beard, the nonchalant walks, and almost this demonic smile while eating up goons, and especially that one sequence really piques my curiosity on the psychological space Kabir is in right now. Junior NTR, at the end of Tiger 3, was presented as this menace.
In this basic frame as he throws grenades at people, there was a lack of excitement within me. The teaser did not do him any favours also if it presented the shot of him running on top of a train. But where Junior NTR only shines is the agility with which he jumps and engages in hand-to-hand combat with Hrithik. This is like me picking a needle out of a haystack. The benefit of having Junior NTR in a pan-Indian film is that he is loaded in Hindi.
