"Death before dishonour. Service before self. India First. Jai Hind!"
Hello everyone!
Like I said in last Tuesday's post, I definitely took the time to sit down and watch the sequel to WAR, because, well, when Netflix decides to upload it to their streaming services, there's just no saying no.
... I do have a bone to pick, however.
They didn't have WAR up there when I was looking for it to watch the first time!
Now, they released the sequel first, THEN uploaded the first one?!?
I swear, make it make sense!
I suppose, if the sequel generated enough views and garnered enough momentum, they'd consider putting the first one up as well to see how it does, which is kind of funny, as the second wasn't as much of a success as the first.
But without further ado: it's time to fight another war, with lots of class, and lots of sass, because our favourite rogue agent Kabir is back, in WAR 2.
WAR introduced us to Hrithik Roshan's Kabir, aka the guy who takes on the ungrateful task of "going rogue" in the eyes of the nation to protect said nation. By this point, it's been a couple of years, and we catch up with him in Japan, where he's picked up a mercenary contract on some Yakuza guy celebrating his birthday.
I think this was mostly an excuse to show us Roshan and a katana sword, but I digress.
After - yet again - giving us the opening shot of his eyes, as he ascends the steps into the temple, the gangster guy's wolf takes one look at said eyes and Kabir as a whole package, and decides, yup, I'm a good boi, Imma wag my tail and ask for scritchies because I value my life, k tnx.
The shot immediately establishes who the alpha is, but also underlines the fact that the wolf is sort of Kabir's animal counterpart - I'll point this out again later. For now, suffice to say he gets the job done, puts the toothpick back into his mouth - making every warm-blooded creature around jealous of said toothpick - and heads off to Germany.
Which is where he gets drugged and dropped in the middle of a meeting with the Kali cartel.
Now, Kali has been trying to take control of India through its government for a while now, and they offer Kabir a seat at their table if he can complete the tasks set out by them (he's been doing odd jobs for them for a while now, actually, they just hired him indirectly). First one?
Kill Luthra.
If you remember, Luthra's his CO and also, as revealed in this movie, the closest thing he has to a father, so our Kabir is trying his best to figure out how the hell to get them both out of there. ESPECIALLY because he has a very intricate history with the Luthra family to begin with: not only did he grow up under the man's watchful gaze, but he was in a serious relationship with his daughter Kavya (currently Wing Commander herself) and only turned her down after she proposed because he'd been recruited into RAW.
So, yeah. Safe to say he knows this is a dead end street.
Luthra, however, knows this is something that has to happen: he and Kabir have spent the last two years trying to get into the Kali cartel, and if his death is the sacrifice they have to make?
In his own words: PULL THE DAMN TRIGGER, KABIR!
Kabir does. It leaves a scar that'll never fully heal for him.
Now in the cartel's good graces, he's told to head to Yemen because there's an ISIS training camp there with his name on it - but he has a pitstop to make in Spain first, with his daughter Ruhi.
THIS IS WHAT I LIVE FOR, OKAY. Continuity. They didn't just casually forget that Ruhi exists, they've actually made it so Kabir goes home to the girl and has been teaching her survival skills in his down time, because obviously.
RAW is now on his tail, however, because Kali sent them a video of him shooting Luthra, and after evading a special forces captain, Vikram (who drones himself into warzones and makes things up on the go to rescue prisoners and take down terrorists, all while having tiger growls for his soundtrack, in contrast to the earlier wolfie), as well as a devastated Kavya, our rogue one decides to take Ruhi to Khalid's mother.
REMEMBER KHALID? TIGER SHROFF'S CHARACTER WITH THE ONE EXPRESSION?
The movie sure does. It also adds a line that breaks my heart completely: Khalid's mother, who will now be looking after Ruhi, says she's accepted Kabir as her own son. BLEEDING HEARTS, UNITE.
The girl now safe and sound, Kabir can focus on his next assignment: he has to kill the family of the Defense Minister, but of course he's got second thoughts here.
So he does what he does best, which is plays the game, and gets Vikram to meet him at a café/club type place; he lays out the truth, has Vikram agree to help him save this innocent family, then, because nothing says 'the world as we know it is in danger and we have to hustle' like music, they bust into a chart-topping dance number right there.
Recovering from too much dancing in italics and too much sangria, Kabir does in fact take control of the family's charter flight, but once joined by Vikram they fight off ISIS together. The day is won!
Except no it isn't.
Vikram kills the family, revealing himself to be with the cartel, and yeets Kabir off the plane with a parachute, but not before calling him 'Kaboo'.
No, that's not some new species of kangaroo, it's actually a nickname from our main man's troubled past, in which he was orphaned on the streets as a teenager, and teamed up with another kid named Raghu, who saved his life. Raghu is actually Vikram, and he teaches Kabir the basics of survival, before they both end up caught by the police and in a juvenile detention center. That's where Luthra finds them, seeking to inspire delinquent kids to enlist in the military instead, and while Kabir aces both the physical and psychological tests, Raghu fails these last because his sense of self won't allow him to let anything else interfere.
Because it can't be 'Raghu first', he escapes the center and leaves Kaboo behind, after which their paths never cross again until present time. Kabir now knows his timeline is even shorter because of Vikram, and so he tracks down the cartel leader in Abu Dhabi, announcing to Kali he's coming after them so they can be properly afraid.
Vikram busts his little session, however, kills the cartel leader himself because the guy admits he's just not all that when Kabir can play chess five moves ahead, and pins the murder on Kabir in front of RAW.
Fortunately, Kabir knows how to lose everyone's trail, and he escapes yet again, but he manages to leave a message only Kavya can read - the engagement ring she had made for him, out of bullets no less (a true warrior ring, that) - and they reunite in Italy where they broke it off fifteen years ago. There, Kabir comes clean about the undercover mission, and what all went to hell since, including the whole Vikram debacle, counting on the fact her sense of honour and duty will stop her from shooting his face off (and also the fact she likes looking at his pretty face, at that).
Kavya decides she's on Team Kabir (as if she ever wasn't), and calls the Defense Minister to warn him, since the PM is on his way to Switzerland for a summit, with Vikram on his security team. The minister promises to meet them - only, he doesn't.
He sends mercenaries to kill them.
Kabir puts things together faster than lightning: the minister is with Kali, too, and offered up his own family for execution to garner sympathy from India as a whole after Kali removes the PM and he gets nominated to that position.
That's all well and good, my guy, but you're in the middle of a bullet storm with no prayer left!
Thankfully, his phone pings, coming from the RAW chief's account: he's there to save the day.
Seeing as this used to be Colonel Luthra, Kabir's like: excuse me, I buried you a little while back in this three hour action flick, who dis?
Turns out, the guy they've all been snarling at, who supposedly shouldn't have taken over RAW at all, not if Luthra had a say in it? Played by the swagger that is Anil Kapoor, Kaul arrives on scene like a boss, saves the day, and explains that, welp, when you're this deep in the spy game, you have no idea who to trust. But HE was the one who told Luthra about Kali in the first place, and the minister's been playing them all like a fiddle, pitting them against each other to take their eyes off himself.
Together, they now hatch a quick plan: Kaul takes Vikram off the PM's detail and adds him to the minister's instead, and while Vikram considers this a minor setback, because obviously Kabir's dead, he got confirmation of it and even mourned him, Kabir sets the record straight by shooting the minister VERY dead.
But he leaves Vikram alive. Just because.
Kali's scrambling, and gives Vikram 24 hours to fix the mess and take Kabir off the board once and for all, so of course he goes and arranges for a cosy ice cave date with the man, while Kaul and Kavya fight for their lives and the PM at the airport where the cartel tries to take him out by sheer brute force.
They manage to get the plane in the air, and Kabir manages to lose his cool when Vikram taunts him about every single person he's lost along the way of becoming the perfect soldier, but still, self-preservation and light win over darkness, and he fatally stabs Vikram with - wait for it - a shard of ice.
Don't look at me, the CGI in this movie is questionable enough that the world's largest ice toothpick actually makes a warped kind of sense.
Apologizing to who he considers his brother, Kabir begs Vikram to help him, and Vikram's like: you know what, I really like living, let's give this a go.
He reveals that there's a bomb planted in the Defense Minister's body to take out the PM's plane, so they yeet it, and afterwards Kaul pronounces that Vikram and the other RAW agents were taken out by Kabir in Switzerland, who RAW still hasn't caught.
Kabir, meanwhile, has an ace left up his sleeve going after the rest of Kali's heads: he made sure Vikram survived, because he needed him to give up those names, and also for old times' sake.
After it's all done, the men part ways, with Kabir name-dropping Tiger and Pathaan, and Vikram promising to always be on standby should Kabir need help. Then, reminiscent of the first movie's ending when Luthra called Kabir as he was on "home duty" with Ruhi, Kaul checks in with his rogue agent as Kabir meets up with Kavya to see if he can fix what was broken 15 years ago.
I mean, props to the man, he's learning, slowly but surely! Got a kid to raise first, now, just before teenage hormones hit, he figured out he'll be way outnumbered and outclassed, so he's getting himself a waifu to help handle that, and care for all his booboos.
The movie gives us one final kick, however: a girl gets tattooed with the letter alpha, and is inducted into a covert program ... also called Alpha.
Which just so happens to be the NEXT movie in the spyverse, led by Alia Bhatt.
This thing just keeps getting bigger and bigger, because we're also getting Pathaan 2, as well as Tiger vs Pathaan, which I ALREADY hate based on the title alone - I can never with these idiotic moves of pitting one good guy against another. It's why I've never seen Civil War in the MCU.
Circling back to WAR 2, I will say it's a definitely entertaining movie, and for all it's almost 3 hours long it doesn't feel it. You can literally start dozing off with so many long ass movies these days, but WAR 2 keeps you engaged throughout, which is a massive point in its favour, IMO.
Unfortunately, there's so much gratuitous use of CGI that some scenes turn out laughably bad, and you can so clearly see green screens were used it's face-palm inducing.
The acting is solid, however, and once again Roshan shines as the action hero who'll do anything and everything for his country, giving him added layers with a past lover that could have been something more (and honestly, they probably take a good look at each other fifteen years after their breakup and think, what the hell did we even breakup and miss out on all this time for?), as well as of course scenes with Ruhi that still steal the show.
Let's face it: dads are hot, okay?
NTR works very well opposite Roshan, because he brings a sort of grounded sense of presence to screen that Shroff unfortunately lacked. The chemistry definitely works this time around, and I found it amusing to see Roshan playing the 'I think you're God' role this time looking at NTR's Vikram, as opposed to Shroff and Roshan in the first installment.
Kavya certainly also works as a love interest because she's tough as nails and no nonsense, exactly someone Kabir needs, so I'm hoping we get to see more of them, eventually.
And what can I say about Anil Kapoor? He looks so evil it's too easy to think he's actually playing the bad guy - but then, whoopsie! He's been good all along! It's fantastic.
Overall, WAR 2 delivers what it meant to deliver, even if faltering somewhat with its effects and some rather over-the-top mustache-twirling moments. But at the end of the day, it IS a movie you can easily sit through and enjoy, and I for one will ALWAYS come back for more Major Kabir Dhaliwal!
xx
*images and video not mine
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