War 2 Movie Review: Hrithik Roshan, Jr NTR and Kiara Advani starrer is a sensory overload with nonstop stunts

For Yash Raj’s ‘Spy Universe’ scheme, as it were, it delivered the multinational action, with ample emotions.  What with the chela-guru chemistry sizzling between the fraternal-twin male leads (Hrithik Roshan, Tiger Shroff) as they continuously killed it on the floorboard. 

Sadly, the same can’t be said for the sensory overload, with non-stop stunts, that makes for War 2. It’s something so charmless, humourless that instead of even having senseless fun, you’re forever forced to frickin’ take it seriously as well. 

What’s common between the two films, besides Hrithik, is that he plays a spy seemingly gone rogue. As in an agent in RAW (War spelt backwards), who must be sponsored by a travel agency, to finance this level of gravity-defying globetrotting.  

And while the producers desperately aim for a pan-India box-office success, with Telugu star, Jr NTR (RRR), as the parallel lead — like Pushpa 2, this picture too starts off with a long passage with characters speaking Japanese! 

That’s how Hrithik opens the show, taking on Japani warriors, with the traditional katana sword. 

You’ll soon get over this lame, contextless opening sequence, let alone Jr NTR’s entry, so to say, which ends with him hung to the rod of a plane, as if he was casually doing pull-ups in the gym — at least make it look believable! 

I hope Jr NTR fans will be pleased still. North Indians, who possibly got acquainted to him from RRR (2022), forget that Jr NTR has been around as a star for as long as Hrithik (and both started out as child actors). 

What you must remember are the larger villains of this picture. They’re a business cartel called Kalli, looking for global domination. 

One, Gautam Gulati (unrelated to any other big-shot, with a similar name) is the king of this Illuminati, or Kalli, in India, today. 

He sits alongside a solo ‘Shakaal’ each from Russia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, over a fancy looking Zoom call. God knows, who funds these blokes acting on their own accord; or what they do for a living. The hero, presumably, works for them.  

I guess, with useless villains like these, who needs the heroes? 

And there are obviously two — while the movie switches into a Slumdog Millionaire mode with chindi-chor (petty thieves) children for some time after the interval, examining their pointless backstories too!

It’s still the only bit, where there’s any kinda storytelling. The rest of the movie feels like it has emerged from an Excel sheet, rather than a script: stunt, chase, chase, song, stunt, stunt, song… 

Basically, action for action’s sake, where only weapons and locations change, including stalactites in an icy cave! 

It’s not that none of those set-pieces work. There’s a phenomenal car-chase, across a town-square and thereafter the town in Spain itself (perhaps Valencia), shot on high-speed drones, that’s surely worthy of an Instagram Reel! 

Except that even this one ends with a car atop a train, seeming so fake that I find it surprising, nobody saw the special effect, and wondered: why are we screwing up a perfectly fine sequence, with something that makes it look stupid, eventually?

It’s also hard to digest that this 180-minute, thoroughly compromised mental atrocity, made with both eyes on the audience, rather than the story/film, is from director Ayan Mukerji of Wake Up Sid (2009), Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (2013). Brahmāstra (2022) was still a notch better; in comparison, of course!

But that’s obviously for the director to be looking at his CV. After a point, it becomes hard to look at the film, without thinking this supposed universe began so smartly with the sorted Ek Tha Tiger (2012), and has been expanding into a strange empire since, including Tiger 3 (2023). 

Shah Rukh Khan pulled off Pathaan (2023), foremost with his charm, making his onscreen comeback, after years, with a new genre (for him). 

Hrithik in War 2, on the other hand, can’t be too different, although seeming rather self-conscious, somehow — and what’s with the redness on the face, it’s not blood; perhaps an issue with colour grading, or poor make-up?

Either way, you find him trying so hard, and for fairly long, to simply protect a particular screen image. As a genuine big-screen top talent — it feels like he’s perhaps wasting away some precious years? A relatively flat, Fighter (2024), was his last release. 

But then again, we pick our battles/wars, no?