One may reckon that it takes a bad pilot to repeat the same mistake in flying combat merely two years apart. However, unlike spotting a bad pilot which requires more than a layman’s understanding of the Air Force, spotting a bad hero is a much easier task. In Fighter’s case, Hrithik Roshan happens to be both.
The patriot’s cinema has always been a subset of propaganda but it has perhaps never before flaunted an utter lack of imagination as it does in Bollywood after PM Modi took office. Gone are the days of Amar, Akbar and Anthony dancing the holy trinity of religious diversity in an ode to secular India. It matters little that the Imaam Saheb in Sholay has only one Muslim to fill an empty mosque and that too his own son, almost thirty years later Saamiya will defend Veer and Zara’s interfaith affair in a Pakistani court.
Between aap janaab and mian
Add another twenty years in the mix and an Indian Air Force pilot is brandishing a punchline better suited to the vitriol-infested corners of Twitter/X. Make no mistake: Hrithik as Squadron Leader Shamsher Pathania aka Patty punctuating his heroic beating of the enemy with warnings of an “India Occupied Pakistan” is not the only bit workshopped from hyper-nationalist rightwing internet. All the already-mocked aap janaabs and mians that permeated Indian social media accounts in fake videos of “Muslim terrorists” supposedly behind Pulwama are brought back from the graves.
The jingoism aside, at the heart of Siddharth Raj Anand’s directorial is a simple story: a man who gets a redemption arc without ever working for it. Hrithik plays an emotionally stunted lead whose dazzling smile falls flat, much to the disappointment of those who have witnessed his 90s Bollywood charm. This is easily achieved by his haughty ‘best fighter pilot’ arrogance and a childish knack for manning his aircraft for stunts that cannot shake off the ghost of Top Gun.
Uninspired computer-generated air action is bad enough coming from an industry very capable of executing good fight sequences; with Fighter, Indian cinema seems intent on staying in its bad editing era. In its long 2-hour and 44-minute runtime, Fighter is too long, has three or four unremarkable songs and cannot decide whether the enemy is an otherworldly monster or humanly stupid.
A bad hero
There is no reason ever to sympathise with Patty. A competitive lone wolf, his boss, Group Captain Rakesh Jaisingh aka Rocky (Anil Kapoor) holds him responsible for guiding his sister, Naina aka Enjay (Seerat Mast), into a deadly zone who subsequently loses her life in the aerial operation. However, a better part of the film is spent knowing Naina only as Patty’s fiancé amid Rocky’s piling grimaces and putdowns.
Despite many disappointing turns, there are also many moments so characteristically Bollywood. For starters, Fighter continues the longstanding tokenism as a metaphor for secular, diverse and humane India: Deepika Padukone is arguably more appealing than Hrithik, playing the smart, responsible and witty, Squadron Leader Minal Rathore aka Minni but as his romantic interest, she too readily buys into the superficial charm of his misogynistic jokes in the guise of flirty banter.
Aside from the girlboss who defied her parents to protect her nation and tell the world that women too can fly, Patty’s team also has Sikh and Muslim fighter pilots who are all able to throw a good party and fight India’s menacing enemy: coldblooded terrorists and men in uniform who are easily fooled by fake Russian accents when they are not watching cute puppies on TikTok during radar duty.
In Anand’s universe, Pakistan’s armed forces are openly in cahoots with the real-life terrorist outfit Jaish-e-Muhammad. Both are trumped by the ultimate evil from this side of the border: Azhar Akhtar (Rishabh Sawhney), a ruthless “international” terrorist who wants to blow up the Srinagar Air Force Station base of the Indian Air Force. It is shown that Pakistan is a country run entirely at the beck and call of the armed forces yet a punk with a bloodshot eye and an insatiable thirst to wipe out kaafirs orders everyone around.
Anil Kapoor’s misfortune
That Kashmir is employed as little beyond an excuse to drive the story is perhaps an apt metaphor for how the film understands sovereignty and diplomacy. In the scenes depicting Kashmir, there are few Kashmiris in sight, armed soldiers are enough to fill up the screen. Since the amateur treatment given to geopolitical conflict is not a surprise, one can watch the film as a film lover and find other tragedies to bemoan, namely Anil Kapoor’s misfortune.
After parenting the most annoying son on screen in Animal, the veteran actor is forced to lead the most annoying pilot. Unlike in Animal, Anil is better able to extract some retribution in Fighter when Patty disobeys command and crosses the LOC in a chase against a Pakistani pilot. The dramatic banter between the two cross-border soldiers notwithstanding, Patty’s proclivity for heroism at the expense of others gets him kicked off the team for good.
Of course, there are tears, but not enough to convey remorse. In his flashbacks, he sees his friends and a budding romance in Minni more often than his dead fiancé. When another impulsive, shortsighted chase causes him to lose two of his friends to the enemy, his sudden bout of self-pity is short-lived. “You don’t have enough power to cause all of this. You are not that important,” Minni tells him in one of the most promising takedowns in the film but to no avail.
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