The opening 15 minutes of Yodha are pure military-patriotism porn. There's the formation of a special task force called Yodha, its founder (Ronit Roy) passing on the legacy to his teenage son, Arun, before dying in the field. Then, in 2001, on the Indo-Bangladesh border, Arun (Malhotra), now a Yodha soldier himself, disobeys orders (“No one taught me how to negotiate”), single-handedly wipes out a contingent of terrorists and sets off a saffron, white and green flare. One love song later, Arun is back in action, this time aboard a hijacked plane. At this point, something weird happens. The film starts to get better.
It may seem like I’m damning Yodha with faint praise,
but I really didn’t expect Sagar Ambre and Pushkar Ojha’s film to tighten its
hold on me as it went along. This is partly because commercial Hindi cinema of
late has erased hope from my life, and partly because of Malhotra’s track record.
His last two actioners were the dunderheaded spy film Mission Majnu and
the risible Rohit Shetty series, Indian Police Force. It’s a familiar
problem with Hindi action: the stars best suited for it—Malhotra, Tiger Shroff,
Vidyut Jammwal—are usually in terrible films.
Yodha kicks into gear as Arun’s fortunes plummet.
He's unable to prevent the hijack, and the plane takes off with a nuclear
scientist; though the government negotiates with the terrorists, they return
his dead body. Yodha is blamed and suspended indefinitely. The film then jumps
ahead a few years, with Pakistani terrorists planning to disrupt a trip by the
Indian ‘head of state’ (the film indicates, but seems reluctant to say, ‘prime
minister’) to Pakistan by activating an unnamed Indian spy. In the next scene, Arun,
about to board a flight to Dubai, gets a text message to get on a flight to
London instead. With the plane about to take off, he gets another message
saying a hijack is underway.
This is the best passage of the film: a hijacking with no
outward signs of one. It’s a while before the spy’s identity is revealed, and
the film makes good use of Malhotra’s confused energy as he engages the help of
flight attendant Laila (Disha Patani) and trainee pilot Tanya (Kritika
Bharadwaj), and keeps an eye on a shifty-looking passenger. A brutal, quick
fight in the bathroom keeps the pressure on. The tension is only relieved with
a stunning, chaotic sequence where Arun battles the now-revealed terrorist as
the plane shudders through turbulence and they’re tossed around the cabin.
Sunil Rodrigues and Craig Macrae continue their fine run as
action directors after Pathaan and Jawan. They build everything
around their star’s grounded style: a faux one-er, a couple of close-quarters
brawls, gunfighting and explosives at the end. Malhotra doesn’t have the
expansive skills of Shroff or Jammwal, but he’s a very convincing no-nonsense fighter.
There’s barely any slo-mo or stop-start action—a welcome change for an Indian
film.
Ambre (also the writer) and Ojha are first-time directors;
like Macrae and Rodrigues, they worked on Pathaan. Their film follows
Tiger 3 in staging a terrorist threat on Pakistani soil so India can
play saviour. It’s difficult to say whether this patronizing attitude is better
than the pantomime villainy of the Pakistanis in, say, Fighter. As
usual, Kashmir is the hook to hang all the nation's problems on. Having Arun’s
estranged wife, Priyamvada (Raashii Khanna), as secretary to the PM who doubles
up as hostage negotiator and Big Decision Taker is about as convincing as these
things usually are. This is solid genre fare without a single deep thought. In
2024, in Hindi cinema, it’ll do.
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