Brilliantly bonkers Bollywood blockbuster
One of the greatest pleasures of this job is getting out of my cosy Wellington homebase and pottering up the motorway to a film I can’t see in town.
I’ve travelled to Kā piti and Porirua on my own dime for shonky actioners and locally made gems. I’ve schlepped into Upper Hutt for dodgy horrors and indefinably disturbing rom-coms.
And once, in a fit of commitment to the gig that might never be repeated, made it over the Remutaka hills and all the way to Masterton for a screening of a pretty good documentary on wetlands. I was the only person in the cinema who wasn’t in the film, or actually related to the filmmaker.
And this week, because it was the only screening I could get to that would leave me time to write this before midnight, I got to visit Lower Hutt’s reopened Event multiplex to watch Pathaan.
And boy, I’m glad I did. Partly because I was the only European face in the whole cinema – and being surrounded by a group of people who don’t need the subtitles to make the jokes work is the best way to see any film. And partly because Pathaan, if you’re in the mood, is a load of fun that any other action movie I see this year will be very lucky to top.
Pathaan is the fourth film in the ‘‘YRF Spy Universe’’. And, nope, I didn’t know what that meant either. But I understand now that YRF is one of India’s most successful studios – and that Pathaan is the latest in a Mission: Impossible-ish slate of blockbusters.
Pathaan opens on our titular hero taking down a gang of baddies who are about to flog a missile to a shadowy bunch of villains who are clearly up to naughtiness, during which the bare bones of a plot involving a rogue general and an ex-Indian secret agent come into view.
There may be some sort of bioweapon being manufactured somewhere too. Pathaan’s script, in other words, is a kitset of a few bits of Mission: Impossible 2, Mission:
Impossible 6 and at least a couple of recent Bond movies, Skyfall especially. But Pathaan comes with an underpinning of real-world politics and conflict that I imagine justifies the long disclaimer that prefaces the film.
Every secret agent movie of the past 50 years has owed its plot points to a dozen other films that have gone before. And Pathaan doesn’t need to be any different.
All that matters is the stars are committed, the action sequences are absolutely demented, the bromance between Pathaan (Shah Rukh Khan) and his opposite number (John Abraham) should be dialled up to Point Breaklevels of barely sublimated campness – and that everything should stop for a completely fabulous song-and-dance number at least once during the film. And Pathaan ticks every box.
Listen, I know that during 2023 I will be watching John Wick 4, the seventh Mission: Impossible film and Fast and Furious X. And because my mum didn’t raise no snobs, I will probably enjoy them all a great deal.
But, if any of those films, or any others I see this year, make me as happy to be a part of an audience as Pathaan did, I’ll be very surprised. Pathaan is a blast.
In Hindi with English subtitles, Pathaan is now screening in select cinemas nationwide.
Pathaan (M, 146 mins) Directed by Siddharth Anand Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★★