A Holiday worth taking

This anti-terror tale of sleeper cells and a victim nation is Vipul Shah- Akshay Kumar get together. This is Muragadoss reading the pulse of his audience to a nicety. It is not really easy to keep the audience engrossed for nearly three hours. The “Thupakki” guy is spot on and achieves the near impossible of having a 40 plus protagonist in romance and fighting with all the gusto you would associate with a far younger protagonist.

Virat (Akshay) is a member of the Defence Intelligence and by chance catches a guy on the run after a sleeper cell bomb attack in Mumbai. Virat- a name that conjures an image of aggression and skill is now on his own, leading a near one man response to the sleeper cell operations. This story is taut and told with a style that is crisp and not very heavy. However, as Muragadoss revisits the success formula, he replicates it and thus fails in an opportunity to make a story that could have been denuded off its shortcomings. But then success is formalistic and given the scale of its Tamil version, the filmmaker obviously sees no reason to revisit the script.

There is a needless love story added to the entire tale with Saiba (Sonakshi) playing a college student- (now you know we live a time when you can go back to college after a sabbatical!). The initial rejection at a bride searching event is script space for tease, woo and love. Saiba has nothing to do in the script but just dash in sing a song, ask for a smooch and disappear. Virat has a local police officer in Makhya (Sumeet Narayan- who for a strange reason behaves like Vinod Mehra) who is clueless about what is happening- an expression in fact patented by Sumeet Narayan who now looks a bit too pale.

While in the pre break narration we have Virat being in complete command and executing a well-made plan of shooting to death twelve members of the sleeper cell, the post popcorn spell has the clash between the villain (Freddy Daruwalla) and Virat. While even here the script is tight and engrossing. However, it indulgences in needless violence that reduces the taste quotient of the film. Punch over style seems to be the call.

The film in a way belongs to Akshay Kumar. He translates the role with such class and vigour that you may well conclude that no contemporary actor would have done it. As the camera reaches his face and stays on it, tells the tale of an actor who has surely bid farewell to the days of youth, but everything else about the performance is top grade. He is in his own element (something he does whenever with Vipul Shah). His sense of timing in humour, his capacity to turn serious and not go overboard and the degree of emotions is near perfect from the stance of popular cinema. The performance, in fact, is an interesting study in the context of another brilliant performance witnessed last week from Rajkummar Rao – both very impressive, may be as different as chalk is from cheese but both amazingly absorbing and tale carrying. The film is surely viewable for just the energy and sincerity of Akshay Kumar.