Yodha, Review: You are on the wrong plane

First they got the spelling wrong, using Yodha instead of Yoddha. Secondly, they got the meaning wrong. Yodhha means a warrior, whereas the Yoddha, who is the protagonist of the film, is an ultra-modern special missions operative, who is disgraced and demoted to the duty of an air security officer, as a result of being over-ambitious during a dangerous mission. At the core of the film is a long second segment inside an aircraft, which is also the most interesting part of the film. But the liberal use of jargon and flying technology diminishes the impact of the high octane action. Yodha also takes liberal liberties with credibility and goes completely overboard in the third segment, which leads to the climax. Not quite as preposterous as 9-11, but if they could do it to the twin towers, why can’t these guys target twin powers?

A brave army officer, Surender Katyal, sets-up an elite task force within the ranks, and calls it Yodha. His young son, Arun, is enamoured with his Dad’s uniform, and hears of his exploits with great interest. Little does he know that his father will soon be martyred, and he will be groomed to lead Yodha himself. On a mission, he is ordered not to go solo, but he ignores the order, slides down an electric wire, trolley-like, and eliminates the enemy. His bosses do not take kindly to his bravado, and clamp down on not only him but on the Yodha unit itself. It is disgraced, and shut, for good. Arun holds on for the longest time, while his colleagues tender apologies and accept other positions in the security domain. But the inevitable can only be delayed, not avoided. Jobless, Arun Katyar becomes an air security officer, the kind that travel on every flight, in order to prevent any untoward happening.

One day, he is checking in to board a flight when somebody bangs into him and moves on. He notices that the person who bumped into him dropped his boarding pass. He picks it up and hands it over to the check-in counter girl. The girl looks at the card and makes an announcement that passenger Arun Katyar should come to her counter, since he has dropped his boarding pass there. Arun is puzzled. He is on the way to boarding a different flight, and his boarding pass is very much with him. So who is this other Arun Katyar? He then gets an SMS on his phone and decides to change his flight, taking the one indicated on the dropped boarding pass. Soon after boarding the aircraft, he sees strange things happening. A burly passenger tries to sneak into the toilet. After he comes out, Arun goes in and finds a metallic object in the toilet bowl. He gets very suspicious and confronts the passenger, and they get into a fight, which results in the passenger’s death. Arun tells the crew that he is an air security officer, and they help him hide the body in the hold. He discovers that one of the passengers on board is top nuclear scientist Anuj Nair, and that the man he accidentally killed was in charge of his security. Two other persons of the plane’s crew turn out be not what they are, a sinister plot unfolds and a fist-fest begins.

Obviously inspired by the 9-11 attacks, and the films that Sagar Ambre and Pushkar Ojha assisted on, Yodha serves us some of those ingredients, then takes off on a different plane. Moving on from Script Supervisor at YashRaj Films, in 2021, to become writer and co-director of Dharma Productions’ Yodha, Sagar Ambre shows great attention to detail in touting aeronautical terminology, though whether, in engineering and physics terms, they would make sense to the lay audience is for the academics to decide. My own answer is “No.” Pushkar Ojha, the co-director, comes from Kick, War and Pathaan, where he was an Assistant Director/Second Unit director. Sagar, for his part, had contributed to Uri, Pathaan and Mardaani 2. So, both these helmsmen have had a fairly good grounding in the action genre. But once the action in the air ends, they go haywire in resorting to twists after twists, and constantly upscaling the stakes, from what appeared to be a hijack, to the elimination of two heads of states, or, at least one. This works fine if you suspend, or, rather, deep-freeze, disbelief, and get carried away on the turbulent path of the plane that is fast losing altitude. It is a giveaway when one female passenger reveals that she has 200 hours of flying experience behind her and is joining this airline, Air Bharat (we do have an Air-India, so the change in nomenclature may be excused), very soon. She will soon take her position in the cockpit. But you do not expect two other crew members to be Pakistani terrorists in disguise, and therein lie two game-turners. I will refrain from going into the climax, which is extravagant if anything, yet poorly imagined. Also, on an international flight, being originally meant to head to London, the presence of only two air-hostesses as flight crew is highly abnormal.

Arun’s domestic life and the impending divorce are totally dispensable. Writers, please be a little more creative in such matters. His bonding with fellow Yodhas is not what you would expect among such a closely knit task-force. His credo, “I never negotiate,” sounds more bombastic boast than a statement of a personality trait. On-ground activity in the control room, with Arun’s wife Priya being a key player, does not have the palpable throbbing that was needed. A fine bit of writing is evidenced in the first hijack (yes, there are two, to be sure, though the second is not really a hijacking, in the technical sense), when we discover that the fuel tanker asked for by the hijackers is holding no fuel, but a group of commandos hiding in it. Arun’s knowledge of avionics is both amazing and unbelievable, though he must have been trained in the basics of the science, as part of his appointment. But surely, he is not expected to be a Ph.D. in the subject. The directors have crammed in too many very long fisticuffs, with neither party taking any serious injuries in the hand to hand and leg to leg fights. What is more, they have a hard-nosed woman in the fray too, fighting as hard as her male adversary. Whatever happened to sophisticated weapons? The ease with which the baddies take control of the aircraft does not convince one bit.

Showing great agility and rippling muscles, Sidharth Malhotra is a good choice for Arun. He still needs to work a bit on his diction, though. The romantic scenes don’t come as easily to him, and are awkwardly enacted. But the fight scenes are something he obviously enjoys, though the blurring pace at which they are projected make you wonder how many of them were done by duplicates, or generated as VFX.

Rashii Khanna (only her second outing in Hindustani cinema, after Madras Café, 11 years ago) as his docile wife, Priya, in a high profile Ministry job, looks perplexed and agitated, both when needed to look so, and where it is unnecessary to be so. She has the more domesticated look of the two ‘heroines’, with Disha Patani taking on the conspiratorial and combative role of Laila. It’s a downright negative role that Disha (M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story, Baaghi 2, Malang, Ek Villain Returns) executes with flair, perhaps inspired by her real-life Police Officer father.

The first credit title is one of thanks to Ronit Roy, who plays the part of Surender Katyar. Obviously, this is in recognition of his agreeing to put in a cameo. He is his usual, confident self, with characteristic dialogue delivery. S.M. Zaheer, now in his dusk of his life (77), is wasted as the scientist Anuj Nair, with little to do. As Arun’s mother, Farida Patel Venkat is passable. As the Indian ‘Head of State’ (I am sure I heard him being addressed as Foreign Minister too, once), Sanjay Gurbaxani is as type-cast as can be and as unimpressive. Tanuj Virwani is good as Sameer Khan, one of Arun’s trusted lieutenants in Yodha. In support are Sunny Hinduja as Rafiq, Kritika Bhardwaj as Tanya Sharma (the stand-in pilot? good job), Chittranjan Tripathy as S.N. Dhingra, Mikhail Yawalkar as Ahmed Khalid and Kumpal Patel as an air-hostess (there were only two, and one was played by Disha, so she must be the other). It is a pity that the villains are not listed on the web and the names flashed past on the screen so fast that one could not note them, as usual. Even if you do a search, the pictures that appear are not with the make-up and get-up they had in the film, so it is extremely difficult to recognise them. Having said that, they all did a decent job, showing variations from the standard, clichéd depictions of Pakistani terrorists. For once, long man-to-man combats, ending with the hero on the falling side, are a welcome change.

Interestingly, in this slug-fest, music plays an important role, but the names of music contributors are not mentioned because the credits vary on different sites. Crammed for space on an aeroplane set, and desperate for lighting, Jishnu Bhattacharjee does a good job behind the camera. Breakneck fights need breakneck editing, which is provided by Shivkumar V. Panicker and Aarif Sheikh, the latter is probably an assistant to Panicker. At 130 minutes, there is already some repetitiveness in the confrontation scenes, so keeping it at this length makes sense.

Moral of the story: The next time somebody drops a boarding pass at a check-in counter, with your name on it, don’t change your flight. And unless you happen to be a Yodha, you might find yourself on a different plane (level) altogether.         

Rating: ** ½

Trailer: https://youtu.be/evs67wC3tOQ

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A film with the same title, also spelt Yodha, was made in 1991, by Rahul Rawail, pairing Sunny Deol and Sanjay Dutt for the second time, after the failure of Kroadh. Yodha was a hit.