Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Fighter (2024) doesn't look like a historical drama, but the movie centers around a highly fictionalized depiction of the  2019 Pulwana attack and the Indian Air Force's retaliatory strike in Balakot, Pakistan, wrapped around the story of a maverick fighter pilot learning to work as a part of a team as he rides into the danger zone.  If it sounds like Top Gun with more crying, that's because it's very much like Top Gun with more crying.

The hotshot maverick fighter pilot in question is Shamsher "Patty" Pathania (Hrithik Roshan), and as expected he's highly skilled, supremely confident, but secretly haunted by the death of his fiance, helicopter pilot Naina (Seerat Mast).  The rest of the Air Dragons are drawn just as broadly, including Patty's old rival Taj (Karan Singh Grover), married to Patty's old friend Saanchi (Sanjeeda Sheikh); Rockjy (Anil Kapoor), the crusty commander who is consistently right about everything but resents Patty for reasons that will become clear later; Minal "Minny" Rathore (Deepika Padukone), the fearless and feisty helicopter pilot who isn't impressed with Patty's swagger, and a few others, most notably Guy Who Is Obviously Going To Die.  (I'm not going to spoil which character it is, but the foreshadowing is pretty heavy.)

Rocky may be a curmudgeon, but he encourages the members of the squadron to get to know each other and form strong bonds, so they spend the opening scenes hanging out, telling jokes, and dropping hits about their respective backstories; they're stationed in chilly Kashmir so they play kabaddi in the snow rather than volleyball on the beach.  And Minny and Patty are clearly headed for a romantic relationship, though he can't bring himself to say anything

But the good times can't last forever.  Fictional freelance terrorist Azhar Akhtar (Rishabh Sawhney),working for the real world terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammed, organizes a suicide strike on a CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) convoy.  (The film goes to great lengths to point out that Akhtar is not Pakistani, a tiny smidgen of nuance that will not last long.)  Casualties are high, and the Indian government decides to retaliate by flattening the Jaish training camp in Balakot, within Pakistan's borders.  The mission is a complete success, though there are some tense moments as Patty clashes with Pakistani air ace Red Nose (Behzaad Khan).  

Pakistan retaliates against the retaliation, and the Air Dragons fight back, but in the process Patty and Taj fly across the Line of Control into Pakistani airspace and Taj's plane is shot down in an ambush.  Taj is alive but a prisoner, and while the inquiry board clears Patty of any wrongdoing, Rocky still has him transferred to the Air Force Academy as a flight instructor.  Patty has to regain his confidence, return to Kashmir, rescue Taj, win back Minni, defeat Red Nose, reconcile with Rocky, and somehow manage to get into a fistfight with Akhtar, and he does.  Though not necessarily in that order.

So, did Fighter take my breath away?  No, and I'll tell you why.  To be clear, this is a very well made film; the cast is great, the action scenes are as dynamic and visually interesting as you can get with planes, Hrithik and Deepika both get a chance to show off their dance moves, and the dialogue is incredibly on-the-nose but delivered with conviction.  But everything is so predictable; the fate of Guy Who is Obviously Going to Die is an obvious example, but every single plot twist is blindingly obvious well in advance.  

And then there's the lack of nuance.  The Spy Universe movies tend to be very "Rah, Rah, India"," and Tiger is consistently referred to as an Indian agent while his wife Zoya is labelled a Pakistani spy, but the heroic rogue agents are consistently working for peace, risking life and limb to protect the peace process and the good people of Pakistan who are tired of the fighting.  In Fighter, negotiating with Pakistan is portrayed as a waste of time, and while fighting Akhtar Patty delivers a speech about Kashmir that ends up sounding like a supervillain rant.  This is a strongly nationalistic movie, and it's using a sensationalized version of real world events to present its vision.

Kashmir is a very complicated topic.  Fighter is not a complicated movie, but perhaps it should have been.