Film Name: Attack
Actors: John Abraham, Rakul Preet Singh, Jacqueline Fernandes, Ratna Pathak Shah, Prakash Raj, Kiran Kumar
Director: Lakshya Raj Anand
Stars: 2.5 Out of 5 Stars
Attack tells the story of Arjun Shergill played by Abraham who gets permanently paralysed after a combat session with a group of terrorists who gun down innocents at a busy airport. Arjun is in love with a flight attendant played by Jacqueline Fernandez who is also killed on the spot feels helpless as he is unable to protect his mother Ratna Pathak Shah from a home invasion due to his condition. Later higher officials deem him to be the perfect officer on whom an artificial intelligence chip can be fitted so that he transforms into a super-soldier whose reflexes are super-human and has the abilities to run, fight and see things in a way no one else can.
While the story in itself is futuristic and innovative at once, the screenwriting at times becomes too predictable, cheesy, and funny. There are umpteen scenes which I couldn’t watch without feeling really STUPID! There is a scene where Jacqueline is late for her flight and she realises that she has left her flight ID. She rushes out to get it when she bumps into John and it results in a kiss, that kiss looked so forced and hence very funny and stupid. Thereafter, in the flight, John casually walks around as if it is his own apartment and not an aeroplane especially when we all know that passengers are not allowed to walk freely inside one. In another scene inside the flight, we see Jacqueline in the pantry and Abraham casually walking in (inside a part of the airplane where passengers are not allowed and when asked what was he doing there, he says he is stretching and that stretching looks as though he is HUMPING THE AIR! Yes, you heard me!
It is clear that John has played to the galleries which such stupid, nonsensical sexual innuendoes, however, all of it isn’t that bad. The storyline as I said previously is surely innovative as the topic of artificial intelligence has not really been seen in any Bollywood film. That in itself is a USP of it. With an array of big actors, ATTACK is a classic example of how talents are wasted in a film! Ratna Pathak Shah plays John’s mother and with an actress of her calibre, all the writers could think of for her role was to be a nanny to an ailing son! Needless to say, she was good in that bit as well. Prakash Raj plays a military officer who keeps commanding Arjun on what to do next, which obviously falls on deaf ears as the hero always does whatever he thinks is right!
We see Kiran Kumar after a long time in a film and he too plays a senior army officer who is at loggerheads with the government because it restrains him from functioning the way he wishes to. Rajit Kapur plays the home minister of India, again needless to state that mirrors Amit Shah in the film who is all huffing and puffing as the prime minister of India is held hostage by a group of terrorists in the history. It is quite interesting to see politics in play as Prakash Raj’s character who in reality always has something or the other negative thing to say about BJP at a point in the film says, “This home minister is in love with the PM” obviously alluding to the Narendra Modi and Amit Shah’s close bond. That’s when the entire theatre burst out in laughter. Newcomer Elham Ehsas plays a dreaded terrorist called Hamid and he has done a good job. Jacqueline Fernandes plays a flight attendant who as I said gets killed by terrorists at an airport, she doesn’t have much to do in the film other than lending the same old romantic angle. Rakul Preet Singh plays a scientist Dr. Sabah who is an AI researcher. She has a role which is a bit longer than Jacqueline’s in the film but she doesn’t look the part at all. Her character was said to be bold, fierce blah blah blah but onscreen her body language is overdone, she doesn’t have the gravity of a scientist, not one bit! John Abraham’s Arjun is nicely done and he excels in the action sequences, he brings life to a part which is so hypothetical in nature.
Even though at the crux, the film tells the same story of the Indian army’s tussle with Pakistani terrorists and is as old as the city that it is based in, the inner lining of the film is a hypothesis. It is based on an idea that is suggested as the possible explanation for something that has not yet been found to be true or correct. But this hypothesised narrative sucks you in as you witness it and a wish for it to be true automatically grips your being and that is positive for sure. “Kaash aisa asliyat mein hota”
The writing by John Abraham, Lakshya Raj Anand who is also the director of the film is new and intriguing. It manages to capture your imagination. The screenplay by Vishal Kapoor is at times cringy but overall an okay job done. Sumit Batheja’s dialogues are natural and don’t look staged and that is a relief and very unlike John’s previous films! The cinematography by Will Humphris, SOumik Mukherjee and PS Vinod suits the mood of the wheel and sets it running. There were barely an songs in the film but whenever there was one, it somehow didn’t sound like it was meant to be there, in other words, even if a song wouldn’t have been there, it would have been okay! Neither did the music add to or subtract anything from the film.
All in all Attack is a nice and intriguing watch keeping the sudden cheesiness and stupid screenplay aside.