Pathaan Review: The promos are but a tip of the iceberg

The hype and hoopla associated with the promotion of this Shah Rukh Khan starrer has its desired effect at the box-office

Hyderabad: The hype and hoopla associated with the promotion of this Shah Rukh Khan starrer has its desired effect at the box-office, as has the over-the-top action inspired narrative. This undercover ‘spy-action’ thriller gets the prima romanticist in his renewed Don, Ra One avatar. The promos are but a tip of the iceberg.

Siddharth Anand has a thriller space of his own a-la Kabir Khan. Given the fact that this Pathaan is a product of the Yash Raj assembly line, you are guaranteed of style and gloss – all in abundance. Action is central. Grotesque thrills and physics defying becomes the crux and the whistles evoking moments of suspended intelligence are aplenty.

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The storyline is that famous fictional broad line divide between the good guy (read patriot) and the bad guy (read antinational/terrorist). The story takes the changing constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir as the backdrop for the ex-RAW agent Jim (John Abraham) to lock horns with our undercover Pathaan (SRK).

Add to the conflict between the wronged Jim and the adrenaline reservoir Khan Pathaan, an ISI agent in Rubina (Deepika Padukone), you have the essentials of the main stream product which is also labelled with the Yash Raj motif. No holds bar. The design and intent is obviously to create characters larger than life and possible imagination, with introductions that will make Balayya and Ravi Teja blush, the characters are more Superman cartoonesque than the orthodox underplaying spy.

With Pathaan fighting Jim and the female fatale Dr. Rubina Mohsin, an ISI agent, it is obvious that Pathan’s repute and skills are under constant stress, strain and test. Working under Nandini (Dimple Kapadia), the script is an excuse for a global tour of eye-catching locales: Dubai, Spain, Russia. After running into Rubina at the enemy camp, Pathaan joins her, (not to mention trusts her) for recovering Rakthbheej from a safe vault in Russia. Vittalacharya revisited but at half time comes another twist.

Now in jail, tortured Pathaan meets his boss who disowns him. Not all the Rusi baddies can challenge the well-meaning Pathan and of course Tiger is not dead!! A long-extended scene of thrills on rails and copters helps the script take a holiday.

What is Rakthbheej? Obviously this ticking bomb of bizarre consequence is under the control and possession of Evil Jim. With catastrophe looming large, the heroics fly high. You are waiting only to discover how debased the human spirit can get and how the stereotypical the Indian patriot can succeed. This celebration of violence (they call it style) and debased villainy (they call it entertainment) and impossible anti gravitational antics (they call it heroics) culminate with the hero going for a hair shampoo and paradoxically an item song preaching love and romance.

If the chaos in the script and in its narrative translation is inadequate, you have Khan fan cat calls and whistles completely robbing you of your peace and sanity.

Shah Rukh’s return is drab. You need to be a die-hard Khan fan to appreciate his actions and predictable dialogues. Deepika does encore of what Zeenat Aman did in Qurbani. Strangely thanks to the huge footage, it is John Abraham who walks away with laurels. Dimple Kapadia wins a few brownie points with a steady performance which is a paradox of our cinema that Dimple has a role of this kind in a Yash Raj film.

Pathaan is a tiring long celebration of wile, violence and destruction. Go for it if that is your idea of entertainment.