Movie review- Ek Tha Tiger

If you are planning to watch ‘Ek Tha Tiger’ because you think of it as a ‘spy-thriller’, you better drop the idea. If you are planning to watch it just because it is a Salman Khan movie,  then  go ahead- it is a typical Sallu film. The promos had made the film look like a Bond-like spy-thriller with lot of action and a bit of romance.  There is a lot of action, a lot of romance but it is far from being anywhere close to a Bond movie.  Salman Khan is a RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) agent who is shown be always on ‘missions’, most often against the ISI of Pakistan, but the story is never about those missions. One would think that with a RAW agent pitted against the whole of the ISI would make an extremely interesting cross-border spy story, but it is not.  

Salman Khan aka Tiger is an unmarried RAW agent working directly under RAW boss Girish Karnad (Mr. Shenoy). The movie begins with Tiger tracking down a traitor in the RAW who had started working for the ISI for money. The scene is somewhere in the crowded streets of Iraq, and after a lot of action through these streets, breaking and damaging local people’s homes and businesses in the process (reminiscent of Bond movies), Salman Khan kills the errant RAW agent and is back in India reporting about it to Mr Shenoy.  Here his conversation with Shenoy reveals that Tiger has never been married and is a dedicated RAW agent, always preferring field operations to desk jobs despite the dangers that come with it. Also, he has not taken a day’s leave from work in the last 12 years. Needless to say, he has never even had a girl-friend either for the above mentioned reasons.

Next, Sallu Miyan is sent to Dublin to ‘keep an eye’ on a Dr. Kidwai, a scientist supposedly developing war-related technology that could help Pakistan. Kidwaii is played by Roshan Sheth (Remember him? he played Nehru in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi). Now with a seasoned player like Sheth in it, this plot seemed as if it would thicken. But it does not- the Kidwa- being-a-scientist-secretly-helping-the-Pakistani-nuclear-cause fizzles out and never concludes. Sheth appears in a few frames later but that is only frivolous. The real reason for Sallu being in Dublin is to make him meet Katrina Kaif (Zoya, addressed as zee by friends), who is an apparent ‘house-keeper’ to Kidwai (I felt so envious of the old fart Kidwai for having a house-keeper like Katy baby). But Katrina is actually an ISI agent (Don’t say ‘awww’ for me revealing this ‘suspense’ because it is hardly one) but by the time both Sallu and Katy baby discover that they are what they are, they are already in love with each other. Needless to say, Katy’s ISI colleagues discover the real identity of Sallu and they get after him. There is a lot of action here as he fights them and finally returns to return to India, both of them deciding that duty is far more important than love and they cannot betray their nations and love their enemy. But Sallu accidentally meets Katy again on another assignment in Istanbul where they both discover that they still have the fire in them for each other. They decide to chuck their respective agencies and elope to some remote place to start a new life. They successfully escape to Havana, Cuba, where they are soon discovered and once again both ISI and RAW are after them to chase them and kill them/arrest them for their blasphemy. The rest of the movie is about this chase, and they are shown finally to escape to a secret location where they ‘live happily ever after’.  

Regarding actors and performances, Saalu you know how he is…he is the same except the fact that he has shown signs of aging on his face in this movie..his hair is so blatantly dyed jet black that it appears out of the place. I remember Sallu looking at his best in Baghbaan, but he has lost most of the charm since. Katrina is a big disappointment. God knows what she has done to her lips; she looks all puffed up. At places her face appears to have been stung by hundreds of bees. Gone is the charm that she oozed in ‘Singh is King’. As a couple, Katy and Sallu look un-fresh. Girsh Karnard has played his part well, as has Ranvir Shenoy (Of Khosla ka Ghosla fame, Konkana’s real-life husband), who plays yet another RAW agent shown to be Sallu’s shadow/associate. The rest of the actors don’t have long enough roles to make an impact. Roshan Sheth should have refused this role unless he was running short of money. Kabir Khan’s direction is good, as is the photography. One good thing about such films is that they take you on a world tour, traveling thru several countries and by putting in songs, they take you sight-seeing. I waited and waited for the number ‘Mashallah’ but it never came..I guess they were to play it with the credits in the end but we never sit thru the credits. I liked one another number ‘Jaaniya’. 

My Rating: 2.5 on 5