1.5 Stars (out of 4)
It was always going to be hard for a sequel to reach the heights attained by War in 2019, but War 2 crashes hard.
Years after the original, India’s best soldier — well, one of India’s best, given that the War films are part of the Yash Raj Films Spy Universe of movies — Kabir (Hrithik Roshan) has left India’s R&AW spy agency and works as a mercenary. Kabir’s swoony intro in the original film is the stuff of legend, so how does he make his first appearance in the sequel?
By staring down a clunky-looking CGI wolf.
The scene somehow gets worse as Kabir faces off against a bunch of ninjas in a Japanese castle. Unlike Khalid’s (Tiger Shroff) tightly choreographed, dynamic opening fight scene in War, Kabir dodges swords in slow motion. He punches and chops dozens of helpless dopes with rapid edits between shots. There’s no sense of flow to the fight since we rarely see Kabir execute more than two moves in sequence.
Kabir’s assassination of a Japanese mob boss catches the eye of a syndicate known as Kali. Made up of wealthy representatives from India and its neighboring countries, the group wants to end democracy and take over the region — and they want Kabir to help them.
Of course this was all part of Kabir’s plan to infiltrate them, coordinated by his mentor from the original film Colonel Luthra (Ashutosh Rana). What they didn’t expect was that Kali would force Kabir to kill Luthra to prove his loyalty. Kabir does, just days after Luthra’s daughter Kavya (Kiara Advani) is awarded a medal from the Air Force for bravery as a combat pilot.
Colonel Vikrant Kaul (Anil Kapoor) takes over Luthra’s post as the head of R&AW. He grudgingly lets Kavya in on the hunt for Kabir, but he’s got an ace up his sleeve — a rogue soldier named Vikram (NTR Jr) who’s Kabir’s equal in skill and tenacity.
The Indian spies track Kabir to Spain, where he’s meeting his adopted teenage daughter Ruhi (Arista Mehta). The girl exists purely to call back to the first film and set up an action sequence. In grand Bollywood tradition, she is never mentioned again.
The Spain action sequence is inspired very, very heavily by Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. Instead of Tom Cruise and Haley Atwell in a Fiat careening through the streets of Rome chased by Pom Klementieff in an armored vehicle, we get Kabir and Ruhi in a Mini Cooper pursued through Salamanca by Vikram in a Humvee. The duo’s little car bounces down a bunch of stairs and eventually winds up on top of a speeding train about to crash — another sequence from the same Mission: Impossible movie.
There are plenty more plot parallels with the first War movie to come, with twists, betrayals, and secret relationships from the past. Kabir has his requisite dance sequences with both Vikram and Kavya (undeniably the best parts of the film). The whole thing ends with a fight in an ice cave, just like the original War did.
War 2 collapses under the immense pressure on it to be new and fresh while also being the same as War. The absence of Siddharth Anand — who directed War and co-wrote both the screenplay and the story — from War 2 makes it clear just how responsible he was for the first film’s success. Aditya Chopra is again credited for creating the sequel’s story, Shridhar Raghavan returns as screenwriter, and Abbas Tyrewala is once more responsible for the writing the dialogues. The continuity they bring is evident, but there’s no life in the sequel.
The new kid in town is Ayan Mukerji in the director’s seat. He earned his spot by directing the big-budget supernatural action spectacle Brahmāstra Part One – Shiva, but that was a passion project of his own creation. Here he connects all the dots, but the film lacks sparks — except for those created when Vikram inexplicably competes in a Formula 1 auto race in a powerboat.
All of the actors are fine, but that’s it. They’re all better than this.
War 2 is just too silly for its own good. No one person is solely responsible for its failure. Rather, it’s the product of a bunch of talented people turning in subpar work on a project too expensive and high-profile to warrant anything less than their best.
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