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War (2019)

Directed by Siddharth Anand

Most recently watched by sensoria

Overview

Khalid, entrusted with the task of eliminating former soldier turned rogue Kabir, engages in an epic battle with his mentor who taught him everything.

Length 152 minutes

Actors

Viewing History (seen 2 times)


Date Viewed	Device	Format	Source	Rating
01/22/2022	Home Theater	Streaming	Video on Demand	7 stars
10/04/2019	Movie Screen	Digital	Theater	6.5 stars
				(Average) 6.75 stars

Viewing Notes

Second of my double feature at S.Barrington to maximize my trip out there. I’m a fan of Hrithik Roshan and have nothing against Tiger Shroff (he really does look like his father) so I was happy to see this even if it’s completely over the top and ridiculous. What I love is all the globe-trotting and normally I’d tag all the locations but I honestly couldn’t keep up with all of them in the movie. Curious how many were film on-location versus green screen.

The action beats are good most of the time. Plenty of chases: foot, motorcycle, car. Plenty of fighting and shootout scenes but many suffer from the super fast editing. Also silly to see how one scene in particular is meant to be gun-kata ballet synced w/the music (overall the music is pretty good). Generally it was fun watching these two hunks duke it out together and against each other.

Now the spoilers as I breakdown this absurd plotting b/c it’s just so crazy.

===THIS IS THE ENTIRE MOVIE===

So Tiger Shroff is a badass military agent w/the fight skills + parkour and he gets called in to join a black ops mission with Hrithik Roshan as the major in command. In the past, Major Kabir (Roshan) killed Shroff’s (Khalid) dad bc his dad was a supervillain of some sort so naturally Kabir doesn’t trust Khalid but is willing to let him prove himself on the first mission to get a arms dealer in Iraq. Kabir allows himself to get captured so his team can track him to the hideout and at the right moment they come in to save the day with a massive shootout and heavy artillery and of course a martial arts fight w/the villain. Kabir tells Khalid that he’s good but has a weakness: a blindspot in his right eye but accepts him as a member of the team.

So now they know where to find the real villain at the top and the team coordinates a strike to capture him in a public square in Morocco. It goes down as planned leading to a face-off w/the villain Iiyasi when of course Iiyasi asks Kabir if he really knows his team. At that moment one of the ops team murders two others on the team turning against Kabir and revealing he’s w/the bad guys. Shootout commences and Khalid (Tiger Shroff) chases after the turncoat in a parkour chase while Kabir (Roshan) deals w/the rest.

This leads to Khalid getting all shot up and in a hospital and Kabir going rogue against the wishes of the Indian military. Months later we have a now fully recovered Khalid chasing down Kabir in a number of locales. Fun stuff but why did Major Kabir go rogue??? Cut to intermission and a “Six Months Earlier” title card over Lisbon, Portugal.

So before Kabir went rogue he was on a mission to get some data files from another villain associated w/Iiyasi. For reasons this involves a dancer Naina (Vaani Kapoor) and her daughter. I think it’s her daughter. Anyways Kabir is seen coaching her in a soccer match and whatnot. Then he’s seen spying on Feroze, the other villain associated to Ilyasi, who has a thing for Naina. Kabir gives a Naina a way to get out and take care of her daughter (out of what I’m not sure) by giving her a mission to get the data files from Feroze. She goes to his mansion and gets caught and killed. Feroze gets away and Kabir is devastated, naturally. It’s also around this time that it’s revealed that Feroze is actually Ilyasi because Ilyasi underwent an extensive face replacement procedure!

I guess this is what causes Kabir to go rogue b/c he suspects someone on the inside working with Ilyasi that tipped him off to Naina and ultimately betraying the mission. So he can’t trust anyone and figures he’s gonna go it alone to take down Ilyasi. But of course he still needs someone on the inside to do research for him so he maintains a secret tie with Aditi (Anupriya Goenka) from the original team.

So Tiger Shroff’s Khalid just thinks Roshan’s Kabir is a bad guy now b/c he went rogue so he’s been chasing after him until a moment where Kabir is w/Naina’s daughter Ruhi and Khalid shows up and says maybe instead of another chase or fistfight they should talk it out. Together they go to Kabir’s cabin hideout where he walks thru all the various points leading to up to the villain’s plan to blow up a military satellite to drop all defenses around India. He describes this as a knight, bishop, rook, and pawn scenario where he’s got three but still is looking for the pawn and was wrong that he thought it was the Indian military commander Colonel Luthra (believing only Colonel Luthra knew about Naina infiltrating Feroze’s mansion). So Kabir doesn’t have the pawn. At that moment a large group of mercenaries attacks the cabin and Khalid/Kabir are in the midst of a heavy shootout (this is the one I alluded to earlier; slo-mo, ballet gun-kata). They escape and decide to work together again to find the pawn.

Now cut to them on a riverboat toasting their re-formed alliance and embarking on this mission now that they know Feroze is really Ilyasi. Of course the whiskey is poisoned with a super neuro toxin that Khalid doesn’t drink but causes Kabir to vomit blood. Then another batshit reveal: Khalid is not really Khalid! He is really the original turncoat that betrayed them in Morocco that Khalid parkour chased. Turns out that Khalid was killed at the end of the chase and the turncoat (sorry, don’t remember his exact name) was taken to the world’s best plastic surgeon for a face replacement (this before Iiyasi had his face replaced). After that face surgery he was returned to the Indian military to recover as “Khalid”. He even had his vocal chords lasered to sound like Khalid. So for most of the movie it’s really been the fake Khalid chasing after Kabir.

Now we’re at the end where Feroze (really Ilyasi) and Khalid (really the turncoat) are in the arctic circle on a ship with missiles ready to fire at the satellite. Out of the blue Major Kabir drops in on the ship to take them out.

——>WAIT. How did Major Kabir survive neurotoxin in the whiskey??? So he drops some exposition on the villains. He apparently knew it wasn’t the real Khalid during the gun-kata raid on his cabin b/c Khalid was too precise in his shooting when he was supposed to have the blindspot (which it explained how he got the blindspot from a bullying attack when he was a kid during a flashback scene). SO KABIR KNEW IT WAS EVIL KHALID but went along with it to eventually hand off the harddrive w/the codes and a tracker that allowed him to find the missile ship in the arctic circle. Of course he had already had an anti-toxin remedy made b/c his insider Aditi noted that Evil Khalid had taken that toxin and not logged it. So that’s how Kabir survived the poisoning!

But the missile already launched! Oh we quickly learn that Kabir had the codes secretly changed so now the missile is targeted at the ship and on its way back. With seconds to spare evil Khalid escapes in an Audi R8 which I was like WHAAAAAAA but realized the ship was sitting in the middle of an ice-covered sea b/c arctic circle so he’s driving on ice. Apparently there was another Audi R8 that Kabir somehow found and started in the last 2 seconds before the missile strikes the ship and escapes to chase down evil Khalid. On the ice! Why did the ship even have two Audi R8 sportcars????

Eventually they reach land and continue the chase on snowy roads. Until they crash into an old church. They get out and duke it out mano y mano martial arts style that no real humans could endure but whatever. Eventually Kabir kills evil Khalid it cuts to the ceremony to honor the real Khalid b/c Major Kabir doesn’t want the credit b/c he wants to remain a “rogue” agent. Then it shows him taking care of Naina’s daughter and that’s the end! 2.5 hours later!

Why would I bother typing all this out?? Because I know I wouldn’t remember any of this a month from now. Maybe I’ll watch it again someday b/c I like those actors and would be interesting to see how the scenes play differently knowing that it’s Evil Khalid chasing after Kabir.

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