'War 2' Review: Hrithik Roshan, Jr NTR shine in a very stylish, very ludicrous thriller

Khaleej Times

15 hours ago

Welcome to yet another edition of the YRF 'Spy Universe'. This time it's the much-hyped sequel of the 2019 Hrithik Roshan-Tiger Shroff starrer War with Roshan being joined by another superstar, Tollywood's Jr NTR.
Now, the problem with Bollywood franchises, universes and galaxies is that the template is already set. All the filmmaker needs to do is play inky-pinky-ponky, replace hero A with hero B and add new songs. The rest remain the same — India-hating villains, bizarre VFX-dominated action set pieces in Europe and the UAE, female leads in bikinis, snazzy dance numbers and oodles of desh bhakti. Voila! The 'new' spy film is ready.
In fact, the above paragraph pretty much sums up War 2.
The 2.50 hour long Ayan Mukerji-directed slog begins with a heavy duty fight scene set allegedly in Japan (though it looks like some strange gray wonderland from a comic book on screen) where rogue spy Kabir (Hrithik Roshan) drops and singlehandedly demolishes a whole bunch of Japanese mafia, their boss and a CGI wolf.
This entire episode has no relevance to the rest of the film save for the fact that it was a task to land Kabir his next assignment — do the bidding of a mysterious cartel named Kali whose members appear in hologram avatars and give him instructions on what or who to kill next. Kali is a motley group comprising powerbrokers from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, China, Russia and Myanmar whose aim is to destabilise nations, bring regime changes and control power structures and the economy. Their next target: India.
Kabir must first, albeit reluctantly, kill his mentor, Col. Luthra (Ashutosh Rana), to earn Kali's trust. However, the Indian security forces catch wind of his plans and assemble a team to stop him.
Enter hero number two: Vikram Chelapthy (Jr NTR), a Special Units Officer, presented like a demi-god who can destroy a hardened bunch of Somalian terrorists in high seas barehanded with the loud score of Shaitan blaring in the background. Giving him company in this mission is Wing Commander Kavya Luthra (Kiara Advani) and the new RAW chief, Vikrant Kaul (Anil Kapoor). To further spice up the pot, Kavya happens to be Col. Luthra's daughter and Kabir's ex. Along the way, the story packs in a betrayal by a key character, a childhood connection between the two leads, a love story, an assassination attempt, double-crossing agents and callbacks to characters from the first War. All of which are glued together by action set pieces that go from riveting to ridiculous.
Let's admit it — when we book tickets for such films, we're not expecting intricate twists, complex geopolitics or high-stakes espionage. We go in ready to suspend disbelief in exchange for non-stop entertainment, edge-of-the-seat thrills and a splash of glamour. Take the Mission Impossible series: we know it's not humanly possible to scale the Burj Khalifa, cling to a speeding plane, leap off a cliff on a motorbike or sprawl like a spider to retrieve a disk. Yet we cheer Ethan Hunt through every superhuman feat because the on-screen spectacle draws us in.
Of course, the charm of the stars play a major role in evoking those emotions. On that front at least, YRF isn't found wanting. Be it Tiger, Pathan, Kabir, Jim, Zoya or Rubai, there are enough charismatic and good-looking actors in this kingdom that make us happily buy into the fantasy no matter how over-the-top the stunts and how implausible, the plot.
And that's pretty much War 2's intention: pummell the viewer's senses with action, style, more action and more style. Both Hrithik and Jr NTR. are glorious. I lost count of the number of times Kabir and Vikram walked in slo-mo but they make for great eye-candy so no complaints! Their much-talked about dance sequence is terribly placed and would have made for better viewing in the end credits but the duo's glib moves make it impossible to take your eyes off the screen.
Alas, even the most gorgeous looking stars shooting and kicking their way to glory in stunning locations, need a script that makes sense. And a film requires a narrative that has balance. Unfortunately, writers Sridhar Raghavan and Abbas Tyrewala (the latter has also written the dialogue) have missed this memo.
War 2's problem is that of excess. There's only so much style and so many extreme close-ups of the two men a viewer can take before the novelty wears off. The treatment lacks freshness and every element gives a sense of deja vu. Be it the color palette or the sets or the locations, they seem to be a leftover from Pathan or the Tiger series - perhaps the production designer got a buy-one-get-three offer to set the movies in! The story may hop from Japan to Somalia to Delhi to Spain to the UAE to Italy to Mumbai to Yemen to Switzerland but the shifts are jarring and not seamless.
On the technical side, War 2's biggest failing is the lack of imagination in action choreography with the overuse of VFX and green screen visuals robbing it of any authenticity- a huge no-no for a film whose USP should be its thrills. As it is, the action looks like a cut-copy-paste of previous YRF spy films as well as Hollywood blockbusters. We have Kabir and Vikram fighting each other on a high-speed train, a speeding yacht race, a Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning kind of car chase in Europe, an underground parking lot fight and a hand-to-hand combat in a glacier. It's as if the writers thought out the action set pieces first and then wrote a story around it. In the process, the main conflict point — the mysterious Kali cartel — is dealt with in such a hurry that it's almost laughable.
The film tries to be too much. A tale of friendship gone wrong, a saga of patriotism, a tribute to Indian spies, a broken love story and the murky world of international politics. Too many elements have not spoilt the soup entirely but they certainly made it bland.
Thankfully, the combination of Hrithik and Jr NTR. keeps you invested though their chemistry is not enough to save the gooey mess. The rest of the cast, be it Anil Kapoor or Kiara Advani, play their parts adequately but that's about it.
The movie is long by at least 30 minutes but wait for the end credits: a new character is introduced, arguably belonging to a new planet in this universe. Clearly, the War is getting prolonged though a bit of a ceasefire wouldn't really harm at this point.