Yodha Review: Sidharth Malhotra Takes the Hijack Thriller (and an Aeroplane) For a Spin

Directors: Sagar Ambre, Pushkar Ojha
Writer: Sagar Ambre
Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Raashii Khanna, Disha Patani, Tanuj Virwani

Duration: 133 mins

Available in: Theatres

Yodha is helmed by newcomers Sagar Ambre and Pushkar Ojha. This is as much a factual statement as it is a descriptive one. Let me explain. Writer-director Ambre is credited as assistant director (AD) and script supervisor on films like Pathaan (2023), Uri: The Surgical Strike (2018) and Mardaani 2 (2019). Ojha’s credits as AD feature War (2019), Pathaan and Kick (2014). Yodha is not exactly a shaken-and-stirred blend of all these movies, but the mishmash of influences is hard to deny. For instance, there’s War and Pathaan-maker Siddarth Anand’s brand of stupid-smart action, trashy twists and phantom-liberal politics: A hijacked Indian plane defies the laws of physics against the earthly backdrop of an India-Pakistan peace meet in the mid-2000s. A disgraced task-force commando, Arun Katyal (Sidharth Malhotra), has the Hrithik-in-War arc: He is believed to be a traitor who might have turned on his own country – but you know that’s just a cool smokescreen. 

Some hammy touches invoke Mardaani 2. Whenever the real baddies reveal themselves during the film – three Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists in this case – they immediately start acting wonky, swaggy and deranged. One of them removes their wig and coos: “It’s so hot!” Another cackles while caressing the head of the Indian head of state. Another behaves as if his favourite ‘villain’ is Fahadh Fasil in Kumbalangi Nights (2019) or, well, Vishal Jethwa in Mardaani 2. There’s a bit of Uri in the film’s aggressive Kashmir-claiming rhetoric and slick combat sequences. For every flashy one-liner, however, there’s a terrorist that scowls “Kashmir is a business; war is our religion”. 

There’s no blatant Pakistan-bashing – which is a credit to any patriotic action thriller these days – but even its dignity is laced with condescension. Arun’s single-handed mission to save Pakistan from itself – under the guise of saving cross-border peace – brings to mind Kick hero Salman Khan’s recent Tiger 3. The ending is similar, in that a Pakistani city is wrecked and infiltrated mercilessly, while the Indians rescue their hapless neighbours (Islamabad soldiers are incompetent; the prime minister flees) as well as their mutual relationship. I suppose soft centrism or secularism-with-terms-and-conditions is as good as it gets. Most of all, there’s the Shah Rukh Khan effect. It’s not just in one-man-army Arun’s disdain for his own system and government, a la Pathaan and Jawan. It’s also in the typical Dharma hat tips. Mirroring Khan’s career trajectory, Arun’s Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ) tributes go from punctuating his romantic heroism – with wife Priyamvada (Raashii Khanna) – to punch-lining his action heroism. The use of “Jaa, ji le apni zindagi” in the violent climax makes his masculinity come full circle. 

All of which is to say: Yodha is so goofy and chaotic that it’s sort of enjoyable. The title – which translates to ‘warrior’ – refers to the name of the fictional task force that Arun leads, a low-budget version of James Bond’s MI6, Ethan Hunt’s IMF or, closer to home, Family Man Srikant Tiwari’s TASC. Arun is passionate about Yodha because his late father (Ronit Roy) ‘started’ it, as if it were a cozy little family factory that just happens to be responsible for national security. Arun’s maverick ways are introduced in a hostage sequence at the Indo-Bangladesh water border. He’s the sort of macho-man who moves so fast that it looks like teleportation – into a militant’s static boat or his wife’s moving car. A happy montage later, you can tell that it’s only a matter of time before Arun – the human equivalent of a last-ball sixer – is reduced to a run. Apologies for the pun, but Malhotra’s intense physical presence could’ve done with some humour.

When a flight is hijacked at Amritsar airport, Arun finds himself at the centre of a botched-up rescue operation. It’s not his fault of course – an indecisive politician in the control room and an alleged nuclear scientist (you can tell that the word ‘nuclear scientist’ is dubbed over something else) on the plane mess up his mojo. Yodha is disbanded, Arun is questioned, and his marriage hits the rocks, given that Priyamvada – who is the additional secretary and official government negotiator – testifies against him. A few years later, the film reintroduces Arun with a stubble and a cigarette, which in Bollywood-speak can only mean one thing: He’s broken bad. Or has he? It’s a neat nod to the disillusioned patriot, one who has every reason to become the Jim in Pathaan. 

When Arun again finds himself in the middle of a hijack situation – unluckiest air commando ever – Arun’s redemption ‘curve’ is literal: Not even the film’s politics sway as hard as the doomed Delhi-London flight. The commercial jet puts a rollercoaster to shame, resorting to all sorts of aerial gymnastics, stopping short of doing a triple somersault and looking at the judges for their scores. As a white-knuckled flier myself, my anxiety hit the roof the moment Arun walks to the air-hostess (Disha Patani) while the plane is taking off – the rest of the mid-air drama (including but not limited to an engine fire, a landing gear failure, a dead pilot, a twirling ballerina of a plane) was just Gerard-Butler-ish B-movie camp. The nerves were too jangled to appreciate the inaccurate science of it all. 

Evidently, Yodha has no shortage of unintentionally silly moments. The Amritsar hijack, for example, is so incomplete that it hurts. It builds up to a take-off on an empty fuel tank and an open door. But the story is so focused on Arun that the fate of the plane ceases to matter after he’s kicked off. Does it crash? Is the danger over? Also, why is it hijacked anyway? How dare we ask such questions? The self-pity montage that follows has a song on the lines of “I’m so alone; everyone is my enemy”. On the next ill-fated flight, the film is almost comical in its effort to convince us that everyone on the plane – including our antihero – might be a suspect. Arun randomly finds allies – a loud Delhi uncle, a nosy student pilot – as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to help a commando hide a body and prevent a crash. It doesn’t help that Arun isn’t the brightest bulb in the room. His spider-senses peak because he receives shady text messages on his suitably vintage Nokia; he boarded the plane too because he received an anonymous ticket. I would do the same, but that’s not the point: I’m no Yodha with a reputation to clear and a plane to manhandle. 

Maybe it says something that everyone – including the film itself – forgets about the poor passengers being yanked across a metal tube in the most horrific flight of their lives. Arun and Priyamvada and the militants and the ministers are so busy fighting for the bigger picture and bragging rights that the humanity of the hijack drama is reduced to a footnote. It’s just assumed that nobody has a heart-attack when the plane keeps dropping out of the sky; again, I would, but that’s not the point. Is being suspended upside down no different from mild turbulence? Ironically, this callousness is also why the film manages to be entertaining. The audacity to range from The Surgical Strike to SRK convinces the viewer that perhaps every man-made catastrophe – be it physical or diplomatic or cultural – is equally inane. The common man is forgotten while everything else plummets to the ground. 

In a strange way, this lack of guile and total commitment to the dumb-fun template rescues Yodha – and situates the movie squarely in between self-parody and self-reflexive. It’s like drinking a cheap cocktail of life and cinema. The unsubtle casting gives away the plot twists (read: identity of undercover terrorists who can spring up as anyone at all), but one of the villains does a great Vijay-Sethupathi-in-Jawan riff – particularly when two captured ex-lovers have a corny reunion under his watch. The joke is that they forget about him, and their urgent surroundings, so that he can wait and mock their ‘filminess’. It’s brash and blatant. But time briefly stands still for them – as it did for an Indian soldier and a Pakistani dreamer, who reunited 22 years after he was falsely accused of being a traitor, in a classic Yash Chopra love story. Those were gentle times and gentler metaphors. Somewhere along the way, Veer became Yodha. And stoic adjectives became belligerent names.