Movie Review: Ek Tha Tiger

By now we know that sex sells. As does Salman Khan. (The latter even in the most sex-less ways: the only shirts he’s ever ripped off are his own.) Logic and storyline can take a hike when Salman Khan is hurtling hard-core entertainment (repeat thrice) at the audience. That rarefied territory of cult-meets-formula belongs to Salman Khan uniquely.

With Ek Tha Tiger, Sallu bhai is obviously in familiar territory, but Kabir Khan feels the need to add the class-and-not-just-mass touch, more or less in vain, since Salman Khan fans turn up even if all he was doing was sawing a tree.

Tiger is a RAW agent whose only aim in life is to accomplish the mission at hand by hook or by crook, and is seen to have no social/love life in his career spanning 12 years. On his new mission, to spy on a missile scientist who is supposedly supplying crucial information to Pakistan’s ISI, Tiger falls for the scientist’s housekeeper Zoya (Katrina Kaif). Now is the dilemma of choosing between duty and love.

Unlike Kabir Khan’s earlier movies, which at least came with elementarily researched storylines, this one lends more weightage to action and star power. Not that you can complain. Salman is terrifically at home with awe-inspiring fight sequences; the one where Salman is on an upturned table sliding down the stairs in a market street and firing at his opponents or the one where he jumps from one car to the other to save his lady love are breathtaking.

Salman, surprisingly, looks a little self-conscious in the romantic scenes. Katrina Kaif for a change outdoes Salman in the first half and when she calls him a ‘Kaddu’, he does look like one. She has come a long way and you can see her reacting in situations instead of being just a fixture. She is also up to a few stunts and you can see she has been a good student.

A jarring note in the movie is the way the intelligence officers have been portrayed. Seemingly, the only smart people are the protagonists and the agencies are out of whack in their absence. The whole chase is too long and not intriguing enough; inevitable comparisons with Ethan Hunt and James Bond come up short. We can only conclude that while technically Hindi movies may well be catching up with their Hollywood counterparts, when it comes to the script, it’s still a long chase…