Once
again, a new Salman Khan film opens in time for the holidays. Usually, the
holiday in question is Eid, but we get it for Christmas. It is appropriate,
since he is delivering peace on Earth and good will towards man—sort of. Khan
brings together the Indian and Pakistani national security forces, so you can
argue that’s close enough. India’s barrel-chested super-spy Avinash “Tiger”
Singh Rathore already reached a separate peace with Zoya, Pakistan’s ISI agent-extraordinaire.
When a group of Indian and Pakistani nurses are kidnapped by Daesh, the happy
couple swing back into action, bringing their respective agencies into line
with them in Ali Abbas Zafar’s Tiger
Zinda Hai (trailer
here),
the long-awaited sequel to Ek Tha Tiger, which
is now playing in New York.
For
eight years, Tiger and Zoya have been living off their agencies’ radar, raising
their young son Junior in a palatial Austrian chalet. Unfortunately, when the
Iraqi military wounds the Daesh mastermind Abu Usman, his terrorist forces
occupy the hospital where twenty-five Indian nurses and fifteen Pakistani
nurses have been stationed as part of a relief mission. The American military
is determined to bomb Usman back to the stone age (as if he weren’t already
living there), but Tiger’s former (and sort of current) boss Shenoy negotiates
a seven-day window for a rescue operation.
Tiger’s’
plan involves going undercover in the Iraqi oil refinery controlled by Daesh,
where they will fake an industrial accident that will send them to the newly militarized
hospital. However, Tiger quickly finds himself in Daesh’s crosshairs after
foiling a reluctant young boy’s suicide bombing. Of course, who arrives to bail
him out when he is surrounded by ticked off jihadis? “Mrs. Smith” herself, Ms.
Zoya—and she has ISI back-up. Soon everyone is working together and relatively happy
about it, but Daesh has not made things easier by centralizing their command
center in the target hospital.
TZH is the second film
based on the real life 2014 kidnapping of forty-nine nurses, who were
apparently released under much less dramatic circumstances, leading some Indian
commentators to wonder what sort of deal their government might have cut (it
wouldn’t be ransom, since Daesh is loaded). Regardless, it is somewhat encouraging
to see Indian pop culture takes the threat of terrorism very seriously.
You
can’t get much more serious than turning loose Khan’s Tiger. Watching him plow
down Daesh bad guys with a high-powered machine gun in his tree-trunk arms is
the closest you can still get to Schwarzenegger in his Commando prime. He also has some reasonably decent chemistry with
the Hong Kong-born, British-naturalized Katrina Kaif as Zoya. They can dance
and make moon eyes at each other during the musical numbers and then blast away
at the terrorists during the action sequences, with equal credibility. Indeed,
Kaif has moves worthy of HK action cinema.
Accept
for the annoyingly shticky Paresh Rawal as the Indian expat fixer Firdaus and
Girish Karnad as the weary Shenoy, the supporting cast hardly registers, but it
is hard to outshine Khan and Kaif. There is a reason they are two of the
biggest movie stars in the world today (you won’t find anyone in Hollywood who
can put as many butts in seats, regardless of the picture).
It
is actually quite an experience to see TZH
in New York. Even though it is a Bollywood release, Khan clearly has plenty
of fans in Pakistan. In fact, the film features literal flag-waving for both
India and Pakistan, resulting in competing cheers from the near-capacity
audiences. Unfortunately, the CIA and American military are presented in much
more ambiguous terms, but it is hard to blame TZH when we won’t extradite the Mumbai 11/26 terrorist, David
Headley. Regardless, it is entertaining and cathartic to see legions of Daesh
terrorists get their just desserts (and there haven’t been a lot of American
films that have been interested in going there). Recommended for action fans
who can handle some shamelessly schmaltzy music and romance, Tiger Zinda Hai is now playing in New
York, at the AMC Empire. Merry Christmas.
