The Bollywood Yash Raj spy franchise continues to impress with large well done action set pieces that are the equal of anything in the West. Gone are the days when punches could be heard in the next zip code and the hero made speeches meant to bring the audience to their feet. These are modern, slick, stylish, well shot, travel the world, stunt driven, CGI enhanced films and are filled with lovely women and bare-chested men proud of their six-packs. This being Bollywood, there is of course melodrama, hyper patriotism, dancing and a hatred for Pakistan. This was the third in the franchise of seven films - three Tiger films, two War films, Pathaan and Alpha. This is the fourth that I have seen and I want to see the rest. They are great fun, look fabulous and do so amazingly with budgets that are one tenth of what it would cost in Hollywood. The budget here is high for Bollywood at around $18 million, but this would easily cost over $100 million in America.


The main characters in these films are RAW agents,  Indian intelligence, who travel the world to kill the enemies of their Motherland. Usually Muslim terrorists. The films can easily be accused of being anti-Muslm, but interestingly here they self-correct that by also having the two main agents Muslim as well. The head of the team is Kabir (Hrithik Roshan) who is relentless in his pursuit of the enemy. He gets an order to assassinate a Muslim radical, but in a great twisty sequence in fact intentionally kills a RAW agent. And goes on the run as a traitor. Roshan is a huge star and so having him as the bad guy is shocking. RAW assigns Khalid to track him down.


It's complicated though; Khalid had been his student and idolized him. And his father had been a traitor and murdered by Kabir years before. "I shot him in the right eye. And then to be sure I shot him in his left eye". But for country Khalid promises to kill him. Khalid is played by Tiger Shroff, son of legendary actor Jackie Shroff who made a lot of those loud wam bam fist flying films in the past. Tiger is very impressive in his physical scenes, a martial artist in real life. In his opening scene he crashes through a glass pane to take on a gang of drug dealers hand to hand. It is a few minutes long and has no edits, so it is clearly him doing the stunts.


The film gives us a few flashbacks to set these two characters up. Why did Kabir turn traitor? Or has he? A few big twists along the way. But the strength of the film are the action scenes. Big, over the top, mildly insane. In one Kabir jumps out of his small plane to land on another plane using magnets to crawl along till he is able to enter it and kill everyone. Holy Cow Mission Impossible! Cruise may do it better, but our boys can sure out dance him. There are two large musical numbers which really had no place in this film - just throwing out what the audience wants - but in truth Tiger and Hrithik are likely the two best male dancers in Bollywood. And no romance - besides the obvious homoerotic unspoken chemistry between the two leads. Think of Chow Yun-fat and Danny Lee in The Killers.

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