Rating : 2/5
Genre : Drama
Year : 2012
Running time : 2 hours 12 minutes
Director : Ali Abbas Zafar
Cast : Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif, Girish Karnad, Paresh Rawal, Kumud Mishra, Angad Bedi, Sajjad Delafrooz
Kid ratingfollow : PG-13
This film turned out pretty much as expected. Mindless violence, check. Blustery action, check. Inane dialogbaazi, check. Salman Khan at his chunkiest best (there is a shirtless scene, to our detriment), check. Tiger Zinda Hai is truly a movie for Salman fans.
Lest you have forgotten, like I did (and then I was forced to jog my memory – ah! The pain, the mind-numbing pain of it all), let me remind you that this is a sequel and there was a “Ek Tha Tiger”, in which we were introduced to intrepid RAW Agent Avinash Singh Rathod, aka Tiger. In that not-so-lovely film (you can read the review here), brave Tiger falls in love with arch enemy Pakistani Agent Zoya (Kaif). In Tiger Zinda Hai, Tiger has set up house with Zoya in scenic, snow-covered Innsbruck, Austria. While Tiger goes camping, snow-sledding and chasing wolves, and even takes smug, Bollywood dialog spouting son Junior to accompany him, Zoya has domesticated herself, but retains the ability to kick and body-slam the unwary shop-thief that dares to be stealing while she does her produce-shopping.
An emergency situation requiring the services of Tiger himself arises. When he is located (apparently being the smart guy that he says he is, he was sending coded location messages all the time, and all RAW had to do was to read them – duh!) the RAW head honcho (Girish Karnad) and his right-hand man land up to taste Tiger ki haath ki lajawaab kaali dal. Repast all done, the subject is broached but Tiger begs of the mission, citing lovely family etc. When Zoya exhorts him to stand up for what he believes, he goes off to help those in need.
Mayhem ensues. Just when we think Tiger has met his match, the Missus lands up to help (Junior has been conveniently shipped to the motherland with touristy Austrian friends). More mayhem, car chases, incessant action, well-choreographed hand-to-hand battle scenes. If you like that sort of stuff, you are in for a good time. Also, Tiger goes one step ahead of films like “Bajrangi Bhaijaan” in preaching the hum-sab-bhai-bhai message and having RAW agents team up with ISI agents in defeating the common enemy. True bravura that!
Long story short (and don’t tell me you didn’t know this already), Tiger and the Missus return to sublime anonymity once job has finished successfully. Rest assured that there will be part Trois; old adage about milking a cash cow comes to mind here.
To summarize: TZH is exactly what it seems – a fantastical tale about a one-of-a kind Indian Agent. It makes no attempt at realism; the screenplay is redolent with drama, and the scenes are just setups to show the machismo of the lead character. The movie makes no attempt at eliciting emotions. The characters are flat and card-board-ish; I do not imagine them anything more than the fiction they purport to be. The film is a sequence of scenes placed after one another – very methodical, very mechanical, very perfunctory; there are no appeals to our finer sensibilities. I imagine that the makers of this film succeeded fantastically in what they attempted to do; they will laugh all the way to the bank.
Kidwise: This film is almost 100% violence – lots of flying bullets, guns etc. There isn’t much else, so am not quite recommending it for younger audiences.
