Holiday: A soldier is never off duty

If there is a genre in film that can be called ‘Bollywood,’ defined by illogical, slightly regressive, action-oriented, patriotic, romance-frilled plotlines, Holiday: A Soldier is Never Off Duty faithfully fits into that mould.

A scene-to-scene remake of director AR Murugadoss’s own Tamil film, the Vijay-starrer Thuppakki, the film makes no pretensions about its intentions, and if anyone is to read above that and expect a mind-blowing, ‘wow, this is refreshing cinema’ kind of experience, they are going to be rather disappointed.

Holiday makes no excuses about its purpose: It is made for mass masala fans, and more so for the Akshay Kumar-loyalists, who might love his under-acted, straight-faced performance in the film.

For once, the deadpan histrionic skills of Akshay come to a film’s rescue. So when he asks his villains to opt for suicide or a disgraceful cop-kills-traitor death, his vacant looks work just fine.

Here is a hero who is perhaps the first ‘suicidal soldier’ in Bollywood. More than once Akshay’s Virat is heard expounding the logic of ‘if terrorists can sacrifice their lives, why can’t cops and common man too do it for the country.’

And for his fans there are three dance numbers, which you can sleep through. They are only there to justify Sonakshi Sinha’s presence in the movie. Needless to add, this over-rated actress adds little to the movie.

The story of how Virat, a solider on holiday, and his pals crack the sleeper cells in Mumbai, and hunt for the master-mind terrorist has many thrilling moments. There are twists and turns, and people get massacred. There are pompous dialogues reminding you of your patriotic duty, and there are odes to servicemen who are badly injured and yet remain resolutely optimistic.

In short, Holiday has everything except that killer villain, which was indeed the redeeming factor of Thuppakki. Bollywood actor Vidyut Jamwal had such a terrific screen presence and menacing aspect in the Tamil flick, which is lacking in Freddy Daruwala, who plays the mastermind terrorist in Holiday.

To give due credit to Vijay, this ‘super-duper mega-star’ or whatever tag they give him, allowed Vidyut to outshine him so much so that the cat-and-mouse game between the two was far more gripping and realistic in the Tamil original.

Holiday, on the other hand, is very one-sided. At no point do you feel that the villain has the potential to outsmart the hero. That leaves us with a movie celebrating Akshay all the way.

He carries the movie almost single-handedly and is brilliant in his fight scenes. A bit of comforting foil to his heroism comes from Sumeet Raghavan, who plays his cop-friend.

Pritam’s songs, while adding little to the film’s overall proceedings, are foot-tapping and melodious, serving their purpose in a masala Bollywood flick.

The magic of movies, it is said, is to make you believe the illogical proceedings you watch on screen. Holiday, a solid three-hours long, often makes you question everything you see.

That is a pity because director Murugadoss is perfectly capable of taking viewers for an unchallenged ride as he proved with Thuppakki and both the Tamil and Hindi Ghajinis.

Holiday: A soldier is never off duty

Director: A R Murugadoss

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha, Govinda

Rating: **