Plot, Sub-Plot, Sub-Sub Plot…..

Tiger Zinda hai, feels a bit too elaborate for Salman Khan, one of his recent movies that epitomizes Salman Khan was ‘Kick’. The movie was full over the top enjoyment, packed with great songs and a tagline that encompasses the true spirit of the movie ‘मैं समझ मे नाही, दिल मे आता हून ‘
In Tiger Zinda hai, the plot is designed in a way ‘ki samaj aaye’. The use of current events, to create an engrossing plot is laudable. What is even more laudable is the filming of the movie, the action and the sequences in the first 15-20 minutes seem straight out of a Hollywood movie. The scene where a helicopter rises and we see shot flares with no sound is cinematic enjoyment.
Digressing here with those shot flares, those snobbish elements who derided 90’s Hindi cinema, always pointed to the shot flares. In Hindi cinema, the gun firing was mostly acoustic with a gun close-up, and a series of fire crackers at the other end. Thankfully the sound got added in post production, otherwise we might have seen actors doing ‘dhu dhu dhu dhu dhut’ as the scene is filmed. To contrast this, the snobs showed scenes from movies like ‘Platoon’, which carried a single shot of a person firing, with shot flares coming out of the gun and yes those casings flying off, accompanied with a speculation that those are “real” guns, Hindi cinema seemed pale. Even movies where ‘revolver ६ गोळी है या ७ ‘ was the central plot point, no one bothered to get gun shots “real”
However couple of decades later, we have those “real” guns, Salman doing an Arnold lifting that heavy machine gun and firing heavy metal, and those casings dropping on the floor, and yes as the gun is firing, the wave that goes though the body, the recoil. Tiger Zinda hai is technically accurate, the sets are detailed, uniforms, the setting, Everything is of a higher quality.
Few areas the film falls short are the sub-plots, for example, this bizarre sequence of events to get the ‘blue print’ of the hospital, which gets a bit stretchy with an emotional angle, plus the usage of the blue print is to point to a cafeteria!, surely everyone who works there knows where the cafeteria is, such devices bring incoherence to an otherwise coherent script.
Plus the movie has too many sub plots, saving a child, saving girls at a city center, saving the pride of the country, and the main plot of saving the nurses. The film meanders from one sub plot to another, the only coherent focused people in the movie is the enemy, even the US forces meander from one sub plot to another. No one is moving in the movie from point A to point B without saving a few people
The second area where it falls short, is usage of Salman Khan’s special humor. Barring a few scenes here and there, overall underutilized. ‘tu tu tutu tara’ is great, however a Salman Khan movie without his humor feels incomplete.
The rest of the ingredients are there, swashbuckling Salman, great Graphics, awesome hand fights, gun fights. What holds the movie together is cold ruthlessness shown by the Villain played by Sajjad Delfrooz. He keeps the tension in the movie at a high pitch. The movie tries to handle the delicate India Pakistan relationship, a difficult topic, hence the movie sometimes seems excessively playing the emotion card, that too rather awkwardly, however it’s understandable, it’s a very delicate thing, and any way you handle it will be awkward, however really brave of the creators to delve into it.
The songs are not catchy, or is it me, they seem well made, still they didn’t feel exciting!
What carries the movie is the one and only Salman Khan, we are so used to his bending of logic, that nothing hinders us from enjoying his performance. His entry could have been better, showing him directly tussling a wolf, it’s there just 2 minutes after his entry, but we need the adrenaline rush instantly with Salman.
Good Watch, plus there is nothing competing with it, so if you are a movie buff, its the only game in town right now