Starring by: Abi HassanAmy JacksonArun VijayNimisha Sajayan
Country: India
Language: Hindi
Release: Story Plot: Pakistani terrorists have infiltrated into India with the mission to disrupt the G20 conference. The action then cuts to Gunasekaran, a single father who
travels to London for a major brain surgery to his little daughter Sana. He is without money and carries a ten rupee note that will fetch him hawala money for the surgery expenses.
travels to London for a major brain surgery to his little daughter Sana. He is without money and carries a ten rupee note that will fetch him hawala money for the surgery expenses.
An Indian convoy carrying a deadly weapon is ambushed and the soldiers guarding it are killed in the process. The perpetrator is a masked man who leaves a message for the Indian army telling them that he has stolen their weapon and they will have to race against time in order to prevent the destruction of India. Captain Misha meets an agent in Shanghai who warns her about the same before he gets killed by another masked attacker. Misha chases after him and gets into a fistfight, impaling him with a sharp weapon. However, the man's wounds heal instantly and he flees the scene. Misha reports to Colonel Azad and explains how the attacker's wounds healed magically. Azad tells her to keep it a secret and instructs her to enlist court martialed soldiers Firoz (Freddy) and Rakesh (Rocky) for the mission.
Misha meets the duo and while Rocky agrees to accompany her, Freddy refuses, feeling that his job got him nothing but disrespect in the end. Misha and Rocky arrive in London and meet an IT Specialist named Parminder aka Pam, who is assigned to assist them in the mission. Azad also arrives in London, but gets shot by the masked villain. Meanwhile, the team infiltrate a London Subway in order to retrieve the stolen package. Just as the team is cornered and nearly defeated, Freddy arrives and fights off the masked men. Pam unlocks the vault and it is revealed that the package is actually a woman named Priya, who was once engaged to Freddy. Since the hard drives were at the risk of being hacked or falling into wrong hands, the codes to a highly advanced defence system named Karan Kavach were encrypted inside Priya's brain. However, the masked man and his army take Priya hostage and following a sustained chase, the group are cornered and the masked man reveals himself as Kabir, a former friend of the duo. He also reveals the nearly immortal masked men were none other than the duo's clones.
In a flashback, it is revealed that Kabir intended to help the Indian armed forces with the help of his latest invention: a cloning program where clones based on Freddy and Rocky's DNA could be programmed with orders by Azad and win wars without being killed. However, when he revealed his intentions to conquer the world using this invention, Azad reprimanded him in front of everyone and ordered him to shut down the program since it would go against ethics. Feeling betrayed, Kabir decided to switch sides and sell the invention to India's enemies. Priya alerted the team about the plan, and Freddy and Rocky were ordered to destroy the program and capture Kabir alive. However, they ended up killing him and were court-martialed for not following orders, after which Freddy broke off his engagement with Priya. However, Kabir reveals that he survived because it was actually his clone Eklavya, whom he loved like a son, that was killed and his death left Kabir traumatised and vengeful.
Back to present, Kabir reveals that he has cloned Azad and kills the real one. He kidnaps Priya and leaves Freddy and Rocky to die. The duo manage to kill Kabir's henchmen and return to the base where they reveal to the team that since India has never initiated any of the wars it has participated in, Kabir plans to turn Pakistan and China against India by deactivating the Karan Kavach and launching airstrikes against the two countries, eventually causing India's reputation to be tarnished globally. Freddy, Rocky, Misha and Pam infiltrate Kabir's base where the latter decrypts the password from Priya's brain. Freddy and Rocky fight off Kabir's army, and eventually face off against their own clones, who keep rejuvenating due to an internal power source. Pam suggests destroying them using a high amount of electricity, and the duo kills all the clones by luring them into a power grid, causing them to explode. Kabir launches the airstrikes before Freddy and Rocky fight him off and kill him by impaling him on a spear. Amid failed password attempts, Priya awakens and suggests using "Eklavya", the name of Kabir's own clone. It works and the Karan Kavach is reactivated, averting the airstrike and a potential war. The team reunites and leaves the base, while Kabir awakens and is revealed to be alive.
HYDERABAD : Yodha can best be defined as an overly simplistic film morphing into an overly complicated film. When we meet Indian soldier Arun Katyal (Sidharth Malhotra), he is on a covert mission with his team at the Indo-Bangladesh border. A bunch of insurgents, with wobbly Bangla, are huddled in a hut, conspiring to cross the border. Civilians are at risk. The team is on their watch, awaiting orders from the high command (Spoiler: they aren’t gonna come). You can guess what our hero is going to do (“Yodhas don’t know how to negotiate”). He takes a headshot, assembles a make-shift zipline and crashes into the hut. Then he kills off all the terrorists in a well-imagined but sloppily-executed action sequence. Punches, knives, guns, assault rifles, almost everything is used. The camera spins more than slithers as Malhotra breaks arms and stabs thighs.
This is a pattern with Yodha, stuffing every scene, be it action or not, in order to elevate it. Arun ultimately saves the day, uncorks a flare light and the colours of the Tiranga are flowing in the wind. Nationalism out and out whenever in doubt.
To give some context, Arun Katyal is part of an elite Yodha squad, which has the ‘best of Military, Air Force and Navy.’ The squad is close to his heart since it was formed by his father Surender Katyal (Ronit Roy). In a corny flashback scene, Surender puts the uniform on young Arun’s shoulders as they both gleam into the mirror. As expected, soon after only Surender’s trunk makes it home. A determined Arun then vows to take forward his father’s legacy.
Not for long. After a failed rescue mission, which leads to hijackers killing off the country’s ‘top nuclear scientist’, the Yodha unit is disbanded. Arun is shamed for flouting orders and is labelled a traitor. His wife Priyamvada (Raashii Khanna), a government officer, has also served him divorce papers. In the film’s first half, too many things happen too fast. Some scenes act as mere fillers. Nothing is allowed to settle. It feels like the film is impatiently trying to get somewhere. Like it has some aces up its sleeve. Like it’s telling you, sit through some cliches, the best is yet to come.
Flash forward to a vague, ‘Few years later’ and now we have Arun, bearded, wearing black shades and smoking a cigarette while looking at an aeroplane through a glass pane. Is he going to hijack a plane to take revenge against the bureaucratic system which wronged him and his team? From here, the film does become nail-bitingly thrilling. A tainted soldier is claiming that the flight is going to be hijacked, should we believe him? Has he gone rogue? A burly, bald guy gets killed and turns out he wasn’t the hijacker. On the plane, there is an over-smart teenager, a loud-mouthed uncle and a clueless airhostess (Disha Patani), so who’s it gonna be?
I liked some of the ideas Yodha brought to the table. It mixes mystery with the hijack-thriller and it pumps up the film for a while. Some action sequences, like a fight inside a plane spinning and nosediving or the one in the flight’s cargo unit with temperatures dropping, felt novel. But it soon gives in to the gravitational pull of the scrappy thriller. Some details don’t quite add up.
There are twists and turns as if this is an Abbas-Mustan potboiler. Is there a bomb on the flight? Is the flight the bomb? Is the Indian PM the target? Is the Pakistan PM the target? Were my brain cells the target? Yodha doesn’t realise when its ‘gotcha’ moments start becoming increasingly convoluted. But before you can rearrange the events in your head, before you can let it settle and make sense of it, the flare is out again. Look, a tricolour.
