War 2 Review | India First, Audience Last, and Creativity? Nowhere in the Picture

When I was watching the promos of War 2, there was an obvious lack of originality, shoddy visual effects, and an easily guessable storyline. I was hoping that when the movie comes, all these will end up like a deliberate distraction, and we might end up getting a better movie. But to my surprise, Ayan Mukerji’s film is something that will make you feel that the promo content was much superior, considering the Story of this pointless addition to the YRF’s weakening spy universe. With the Story by Aditya Chopra and the visual effects by his own company competing for the Golden Raspberry Awards, War 2 is juggling between being unbearable and unintentionally funny.

So, as we all know, Kabir has gone rogue, and he is now a private mercenary killing for random people. A secret Illuminati-like organization called Kali Cartel wants him to be a part of it, and to prove his loyalty, he was asked to do something that shook the Indian spy agency. India needs to confront Kabir, and what we see in War 2 is the hunt for Kabir, this time led by Vikram Chelapathi.

It is kind of common sense that if they are pitting two of India’s biggest superstars against one another, there will be a twist in the tale that will make them fight for the same team. You know, that classic Batman versus Superman, Captain America Civil War kind of thing. But the problem here is the utter lack of imagination in setting up a proper Story. You have this jarring opening sequence of the hero, where he walks in slow motion with an Arctic wolf. And it leads to a sword fight, which eventually ends in a big explosion. And the way that whole fight is designed, you will lose complete faith in the movie in the beginning itself. After this, we have some atrociously bad imaginations like Jr. NTR climbing on a drone to land on a ship that needed to be rescued. Then we have Jr. NTR driving a boat on an F1 track. The way that boat chase escalates in War 2 is so bad that both Joseph Kosinski and Vin Diesel would do a facepalm if they saw it.

When Tom Cruise does his own stunts with minimal or invisible visual effects, I have seen many people look at it as some sort of promotional stunt and say they could have done it easily using a green screen and CGI. Well, War 2, in a way, is an answer to all those people, as almost every frame in the movie has some sort of green screen element, which just takes out the conviction from the film. There is this sequence in the beginning where a car is being driven on the top of a train, and a lot of drama is happening. The performance of the actors is such that they have no clue about the end result of the CGI-generated footage. The switch from real footage to CGI is easily understandable. They have spent crores of money to make this series of illogical set pieces, and there was absolutely no effort to get the details right in the flashback portions that were set in 1999. I mean, at least show the old trains that are now being used. They have shown train compartments that were built just before Vande Bharat.

Ayan Mukerji is not trying to own the script and give the movie any of his signature. I mean, it is the same old Siddharth Anand stuff in terms of color palette, the use of CGI, and even the imagination. Who can forget the face-swapping in War? The interval twist of the movie starts off as an interesting shift, and how it ends up is just outright bad. It is a trope that most writers said goodbye to almost multiple decades ago, and YRF has paid the price for using that sort of twist when they made Tashan. When you watch some bad movies, you will always wonder if anyone with an updated mind would approve such a dated idea. Well, when the Story credit belongs to the most powerful producer in the industry, that can happen. The music isn’t that memorable, and the dance off between the two brilliant dancers was just wasted in this chaos.

For Hrithik Roshan, War isn’t much about subtle acting. The movie is basically drooling over his physique, and there is one shot of his bicep alone in the introduction. All he needs to do here is the classic slow-motion walk in various outfits, along with some of the stunts. Jr. NTR, the new addition to the YRF spy universe, gets the role of this soldier who has temper problems. The cheek-shivering acting of his against the smouldering intensity style of Hrithik at times has a good balance, but there are areas where the contrast makes it look pretty odd. Even though the character of Kavya, played by Kiara Advani, has connections in the Story, the acting she needs to do here is the usual glamor showcasing. There is a good chunk of the movie where she is absent from the entire Story. The same can be said about Anil Kapoor’s character’s screen time as well, who will be appearing as the new RAW chief in the spy universe.

Physics and logic were not considered while making most of the YRF spy universe movies, and that was sort of understandable because of the larger-than-life characters they created. When it comes to War 2, the same callousness can be seen in handling emotions like patriotism and brotherhood. If you see anybody walking out of a theater with a bright smile after watching War 2, there is a high chance that he or she is the owner of a successful movie roast channel on YouTube. It is three hours of content for troll makers, and the estimated budget of this green-screen atrocity is 400 crores.