For now, ‘Shershaah’ will remain Sidharth Malhotra’s most notable performance and a successful film at that. Pitching himself to feel pride in wearing the uniform is a great gesture indeed. We do agree but as far as this film goes, it sounded skippable right from its announcement. For me, the buck stopped at its title, which is a stumbling block in the power of the word, ‘Yoddha’ means a warrior. Had it been spelt correctly ‘Yoddha’, it would have derived a different level of power (n.b. I am not a numerologist). Just by positioning a film as patriotic or nationalist does not earn brownie points. It needs to have equal amount of substance in the narrative to support the subject matter.
Surprisingly, Indian filmmakers have been, in the recent times, presenting a unique way of calling out our neighbours with a mushy-mushy gesture, of protecting their head of state in their own country!! Remember Salman Khan starrer ‘Tiger 3’. Seemingly, the climax and the setting of ‘Tiger 3’ and ‘Yodha’ appear to be on similar lines.
The plot of ‘Yodha’ is wafer thin with mirch masala added distastefully. ‘Yodha’ is a special task force whose first commander was Surender Katyal (Ronit Roy) who lay down his life in action. His son Arun Katyal (Sidharth Malhotra) who looks up to his father, has similar patriotic fervour and vows to wear the ‘Yodha’ uniform. But there is a problem, he always breaks the chain of command and hence faces ‘divorce’ from his wife Priyamvada Katyal (Raashii Khanna) who is a high authority in the system (also later shown as secretary to the PM).
The ‘Yodha’ unit is suspended after a failed operation. However, Arun is hell bent on fighting the system and reviving ‘Yodha’. Time passes and now Arun boards an unplanned flight which gets hijacked! There are whispers amongst peers if Arun is a ‘Desh Ka Dushman’ (traitor) and the hijacker?! If so, what could be the reason. Well, probably, such a storyline on the paper would have looked tempting, isn’t it? But the narrative is far from the thrills for a sane viewer.
The script is so weak and at times one of its oft repeated dialogue – “What is going on here, Yahan kya chal raha hai?” – also matches the audiences sentiments. In one of the climax scenes, Sidharth Malhotra has to mutter the words, “Iss film ka hero main hoon,” as though to remind the audience of his presence. The characters are equally confused as the audience. What compels our writers to have such naive lines in the narrative making a serious thriller look childish.
Sample this, Arun finds out that there are strong magnetic strips that are causing the malfunctioning of the aircraft systems, he informs the pilot, good, but why on earth does he not just remove them. They seem to be just clinging on the panel!! Similarly, more than Arun the ‘Yodha’, it is Disha Patani disguised as flight crew who overpowers him. Though in one of the scenes, Sidharth Malhotra is shown engaging the flight landing gear with his sheer muscle power. Sidharth Malhotra, the ‘Yodha’ has more knowledge about the planes than a pilot with more than 200 hours of flying experience!
It is so surprising that just to create drama, the system in the narrative suspends the task force with one (seemingly) failed mission and later on with yet another (seemingly) successful mission, the task force is on again.
On acting front, it is a Sidharth Malhotra flight right through the run time with some dialogues and drama spared for Raashii Khanna and some action for Disha Patani.
Overall, an action thriller on an aircraft with twists was a good idea but for the weak writing, it turns out to be a turbulent ride
The film is a joint venture between Prime Video and Dharma, which means it should stream on OTT soon, so you can check for yourself.
Movie: Yodha
Directed by: Sagar Ambre & Pushkar Ojha
Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Raashii Khanna, Disha Patani
Running time: 2hrs 13mins
