In a needlessly flashback-heavy plot, Indian super spy Pathaan (Shar Rukh Khan) has to thwart the fiendish and just as needlessly byzantine plans of super mercenary and ex Indian super spy Jim (John Abraham, presence-wise completely outplayed by everyone else on screen) to loosen a genetically modified small pox virus on, ahem, “Mother India”. Because this is a YRF Spy Universe film, Pathaan also falls for Pakistani super spy Rubai (Deepika Padukone), who may or may not be on his side.
This is much easier to stomach than Siddarth Anand’s earlier entry into the YRF spy universe franchise, the so jingoistic it took all of the joy out of the silly action War. It’s still plenty jingoistic, mind you, but it’s mild for the standards of what comes out of India these days, and keeps to the general tenets of the international action movies. It even manages to do something nearly unheard of these days in Bollywood – its hero is an adopted Muslim, and that’s a good thing, which only Shah Rukh Khan can get away with now. And come to think of it, Rubai is probably Muslim as well, though clearly not a very conservative one, given her fashion style, which leaves us with a contemporary Bollywood movie whose heroes are both Muslims.
Deepika, as it turns out, like quite a lot of her contemporary female peers in Bollywood is also a pretty convincing action heroine and appears to have genuine fun strutting more than just bikinis and opening her tear ducts. That SRK is still a well of off-handed charisma, who makes even machismo look not all that unpleasant should be taken as a given.
For most of the time, Pathaan gives up on all pretences at even a sort-of realism, or even just mild believability, and turns into a full-on live action cartoon, with impossibly beautiful people strutting through insane (that’s a compliment) action set pieces with terrible (but who cares) CGI, making goofy (but likeable) jokes, and demonstrating a cheerful hatred for that boring reality business. Imagine a Tom Cruise Mission Impossible with a sense of humour, and a lead whose ego doesn’t get in the way of letting the other actors on screen shine, too. Which also allows for an incredibly silly and fun Salman Khan cameo as his own YRF hero Tiger, making dad jokes while helping SRK out in an impossible/awesome fight on top of a train.
Until the film suddenly remembers that all of its main characters have torture and dead parents in their past and goes all gritty for five minutes. Fortunately, it will proceed to get distracted by yet another explosion in few minutes, so all is well in the YRF Spy Universe.
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