‘War 2' review: Laboured sequel fails to capture the silly joy of first film

Mint

2 days ago

Metaphors in Hindi films come with brass bands and neon signs. War 2 opens, as Pushpa 2 (2024) and Thug Life (2025) did, with dreams of Japan. A yakuza family is sitting down to dinner when a raggedy wolf walks in, followed by a panicked emissary with news of an approaching army. The army, it turns out, is ol' green eyes, erstwhile RAW agent turned freelance assassin Kabir (Hrithik Roshan). He looks wilder than he did in War (2019), dispatching waves of armed killers with a grim smile until it's just him and the hound left. It's almost like he's become… a lone wolf.
After the Japan job, Kabir is hired by Kali, a shadowy crime cartel with a representative each from Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. They're bent on some kind of world domination, though all their plans invariably centre on India. Kabir is key, the superspy patriot who now kills his own people, for a price. But writers Sridhar Raghavan and Abbas Tyrewala know that even if Kali believes Kabir has turned, the audience knows better. And so, soon after, it's made clear that Kabir going rogue is part of a mission to destroy the cartel from within.
The problem is, only Kabir and former RAW chief Luthra (Ashutosh Rana) know of the plan. The new boss, Kaul (Anil Kapoor), immediately sends a guided missile his way in the shape of special ops soldier Vikram (also headed in his direction, with more mixed feelings, is Luthra's daughter, Kavya, played by Kiara Advani). Vikram (NTR Jr.) is introduced singlehandedly demolishing a ship-full of pirates who've taken a group of Indians hostage. It's a splashy, ludicrous set piece, in keeping with the YRF house style. And yet there's something lacking, that dancer's agility and tongue-in-cheek creativity that made the first War such a delight.
NTR Jr. for Tiger Shroff isn't a like-for-like replacement. Their acting evens out: Shroff with a lighter touch, NTR Jr. a marginally stronger dramatic presence. But where the Telugu star is a similar screen fighter to Roshan, Shroff's martial arts skills offered a useful point of contrast in War. Shroff also elevated his co-star: seeing Kabir through Khalid's worshipful eyes made Roshan seem all the more godlike. There's a different dynamic in War 2, that of blood brothers who've fallen out—a very common framing in modern Indian action cinema, and less interesting as a result.
The other big replacement is Ayan Mukerji for Sidharth Anand, director of YRF actioners War and Pathaan (2023). Last year's Fighter showed that Anand needs the wit of Tyrewala and Raghavan to avoid coming off like another hawkish government shill Bollywood director. But perhaps YRF needs Anand too. He understands these films in a way Mukerji can't. The edifice remains the same, what's missing is the knack of bearing down on the right moment. There are few scenes in modern Hindi film as giddily effective as the camera panning to John Abraham smirking in the pool in Pathaan. War 2 offers similar opportunities, none of which are sold with the same verve.
Mukerji has practically the same team that did War: Tyrewala-Raghavan writing, Aditya Chopra producing, cinematographer Benjamin Jasper, editor Aarif Sheikh, score by Sanchit and Ankit Balhara. But he can't make their work sing—even the catchy 'Janaab-e-Aali' number struggles to seem like anything other than a reheat of 'Jai Jai Shiv Shankar'. War 2 has every kind of set piece you'd expect from a Spyverse film, on top of trains and up belltowers and in ice caves, wielding samurai swords and brass knuckles and grenades. Even with a three-hour runtime, you won't lack for quantity, though quality varies (the sequence where they're hanging off a plane but somehow landing precision kicks is too stupid even for YRF). After Brahmastra, it was always going to be a gamble to hire Mukerji for a big action film. Perhaps the studio figured it wouldn't matter, that the expert and very large group of stunt and fight coordinators (including regulars Se-yeong Oh, Sunil Rodrigues and Craig Macrae) would handle things fine. But it's never the same: there are filmmakers who direct action persuasively and those who can't, and fans can tell the difference.
If Mukerji seems cautious, so does Yash Raj. This is the sixth Spyverse film, and the second with Kabir. We can assume there'll be a Pathaan sequel at some point. But in case the studio decides to pull the plug on Salman Khan's Tiger—and it should—they might find themselves short of leads, even with the female-led Alpha in the works. This might be why War 2 closes very few character arcs and introduces a new central figure in Kaul. It's risk-averse universe management, but it denies the film the sense of completeness that War and Pathaan had. There's an awful end-credits montage that flies in the face of the emotional tenor in the film's second half. You've got to know when to walk away, know when to run…