Spy Month: War

War (2019) isn't just a big budget spy movie with improbable gadgets and even more improbable action scenes in exotic locations, it's also an inter-generational Bollywood bromance, bringing together Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff for a long awaited dance off.  Plus all the action, I guess.

Roshan plays veteran RAW agent Kabir Dhaliwal.  Kabir has gone rogue, assassinating his handler in Delhi when he was supposed to be overseas assassinating a terrorist leader.  Kabir was a highly placed agent, and if he's switched sides, India's entire intelligence community is in danger.  He needs to be stopped, and Colonel Luthra (Ashutosh Rana) knows just the man to do it: Kabir's protege Khalid (Tiger Shroff).  

Luthra promptly gathers his team to hunt down Kabir and puts some other guy in charge, worrying that Khalid won't be able to kill his mentor.  This gives Khalid time for a flashback about his struggle to join Kabir's elite team, a struggle complicated by the fact that Khalid's father was a traitor, eventually killed by Kabir.  Still, Khalid gets his chance, and during a mission to Iraq he proves himself.  Kabir accepts him as a loyal team member, and there's the aforementioned big dance number.

Kabir's target is businessman, arms dealer and terrorist (he's a busy guy) Rizwan Ilyasi (Sanjeev Vatsa). He's finally tracked Ilyasi to Morocco, and the team moves in.  Unfortunately, one of the team (Yash Raaj Singh) is a mole, and the resulting gunfight leaves most of the team dead, and both Kabir and Khalid seriously wounded.

Back in the present, Kabir kills an Air Force Colonel in spectacular fashion, destroying two planes and a jeep in the process.  It's clear that he's working his way down a list of targets.  He still has time to pop up and taunt Khalid, supervillain style, and Khalid is desperately trying to figure out a motive.  the answers can only be found in another extended flashback about Kabir's last mission in Italy, a mission involving Ilyasi's associate Firoze Contractor (Mashmoor Amrohi) and plucky single mom Naina (Vaani Kapoor.)  

War is a spy movie, which means that things aren't always what they first appear to be.  That's true of the plot and it's also true of the movie itself, which starts with fairly grounded espionage action and ends with missiles, spy satellites, and Kabir and Khalid crashing their sports cars into a ruined cathedral that is located somewhere in the Arctic Circle for a final martial arts fight.

Despite the escalating action scenes, though, the movie is very tightly focused on the relationship between Kabir and Khalid.  There are women in the movie, and they're important; Naina's role is short but meaningful, team member Aditi (Anupriya Goenka) is the single most competent character in the Spy Universe so far, and evil plastic surgeon Mallika (Dipannita Sharma) enables some key twists, but there are no love interests to come between the guys, and when Kabir makes his glamorous entrance, it's Khalid who watches awestruck.  

And that leads to one of the movie's problems.  Hrithik Roshan has put in some terrible performances over the years (looking at you, Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon) but he has evolved as an actor.  Tiger Shroff is a great dancer and a skilled action star, but Roshan has a decade and a half of experience on him.  The dance off is close, but the clash of personalities is not.