"Pathan"
Watched Hindi movie "Pathan".
Story and direction by Siddharth Anand. Screenplay by Shridhar Raghavan . Produced by Aditya Chopra. Cinematography Satchit Paulose. The film stars Shahrukh Khan, Ashutosh Rana, Dimple, John Abraham, Deepika Padukone. Music by Vishal-Shekhar. The film runs for about 2 hour 20 minutes and was released in 2023. I watched it on Netflix on 23rd Mar 2023 with Aditi.
Shahrukh is an agent of a secret organization (JOKR) of Indian intelligence. Pathan is his nom de guerre, no one knows his real name. He was duped by an ISI agent, Deepika, in the past. She is in cahoots with John Abraham, a RAW agent gone bad and now a mercenary. Pakistan has contracted John to unleash Raktbeej on India.
Why did Deepika dupe Shahrukh? Why did John go bad? What is Raktbeej? Can Pathan save the day?
If you watch this movie, make sure you don’t take logic, reason, common sense, credibility, brain, thinking etc with you. Otherwise they will be casualties at the end of movie. Director delivers an action flick with little for a story. Once this is established, you enjoy the movie. Director does a good job of entertaining you.
There are two good songs. Cinematography is very good. Actions are fantastic, except any connection with reality. The gravity doesn’t exist, random bullets don’t hit the protagonists, hero jumps from a plane and catches a rope, villain pulls two flying helicopters towards him simultaneously, even if stabbed in heart, hero continues fighting, hero learns to fly a machine with bird wings, when the machine is destroyed mid air, he lands on top of villain. The list is endless.
Shahrukh delivers a good performance, but somehow the role of secret agent doesn’t suit him. Neither does his artificial looking muscles. Deepika looks beautiful in some scenes, acts well. But she doesn’t look delicious eye candy. Dimple does well. Ashutosh disappoints. The real winner in this movie is John. He looks great, acts very well and has omnipotent screen presence.
There is a cross over with Tiger franchise. Salman (Tiger) comes to Pathan’s help at a crucial moment and Pathan promises to return the favor. Expect Shahrukh to make a guest appearance in Tiger3.
At the end of the movie, there is a tongue in cheek dialogue between Tiger and Pathan. That is the highlight of the movie. It applies to reel life and real life. Both of them agreeing that there is no young guy to take their place and they are the ones to do it. Hilarious!
This movie broke all records at box office and turned out to be the highest grossing movie.
Positives: Actions. Cross over.
Negatives: Story. Logic, reason, common sense.
Watch if you liked the review.
