The most knowing moment of Siddharth Anand's “Pathaan” comes when Shah Rukh Khan jokingly (but not humbly) remarks “I'm so sexy!”, ostensibly to his female co-star, but secretly to the audience. It's true: he's sexy and he knows it, and his long-awaited return to the screen as a leading man is a living, breathing reminder of that fact. Now at 57 years old, the Bollywood icon has pulled some sort of magic trick and seems to be ageing in reverse. In relative terms, he's now two years older than Tom Cruise was at the time of filming the most physically-strenuous role of his career in “Mission: Impossible – Fallout”, and while it's not likely he's concerned with besting his Western rival's mega-hit comeback in “Top Gun: Maverick”, Khan gives him a run for his money with a renaissance of his own in this deeply silly, incredibly enjoyable action extravaganza.
As with most of Khan's biggest works, this wastes no time getting to the action. Tensions between India and Pakistan are igniting when Khan's ripped, grizzled super-soldier Pathaan returns to the fray after being thought dead for two years. Asses are kicked and names are taken in a kinetic fight scene “Somewhere in Africa” (an unfortunate vaguery that's not inflicted on any other continent in the film), and the ripples are felt all the way back in India, Pathaan's motherland. Every other character's jaw-to-the-floor reaction at Pathaan's resurrection is a “Jesus Christ, that's Jason Bourne!”-style moment, equal parts fearful and oddly aroused by the sudden appearance of their friend/enemy. Cue a flashback that takes up half the entire film where Pathaan heads up a special task force of operatives known as JOCR (Joint Operation and Covert Research), where a dramatic scientist kidnapping in Dubai sets him on a collision course with his darker, mirror image: a defected spy, hilariously known only as Jim (John Abraham, taking on a rare villain role). Jim and Pathaan's rivalry sees them on an intercontinental world tour, staging showdowns in sunny Spain, modern Moscow, and the beautiful mountains of Afghanistan, and also grappling over a mysterious doomsday device only known as ‘Raktbeej'. Along the way, Pathaan's sparky relationship with Pakistani femme fatale Rubina (Deepika Padukone) gets so intense it threatens to upset the power balance of the entire planet, and their double-act gives the story plenty of life outside of its homoerotic hero-villain core.
The most striking thing about “Pathaan” is its outright fetishization of every one of its main stars. Blossoming action director Siddharth Anand (of “War” fame) indulges in both the male and female gaze to absurd degrees, but when the central goal of this film is to enjoy good-looking people being very good-looking all the time, it's a strength rather than a weakness. Anand has a very off-kilter sense of humor when he's looking at the spectacle of the human form at peak physical performance, and the devil is in the details here: take a look at how many Khan costume changes has during Padukone's sultry introduction as a love interest. Is he getting so hot under the collar he has to change his shirt four times in as many minutes? And is it also implied that Abraham is such a steamy screen presence that he is able to get out of a swimming pool and be instantly dry? Sight gags like this come thick and fast in the film's decadent first half, laying a tremendous amount of ground work for these beautiful people to play an immensely fun game of cat-and-mouse on a global level.
It gets to the point where even Anand's action is sexy. The hand-to-hand combat between Pathaan and Jim possesses a rare smoldering quality where it's pretty uncertain whether they're about to kill or kiss each other, and a glorious (if gratuitous) cameo appearance of another well-sculpted Bollywood star (who shall remain nameless at risk of spoiling the surprise, but it's safe to say this is a film in part of a wider Bollywood spy universe) exists only to provoke a couple of swoons, general rounds of applause and cheers of “Right on!” “Pathaan” is a film unafraid to be outrageously gorgeous in every respect, which has in part caused protests and poster burnings from right-wings Hindutva groups over Padukone's saffron-coloured swimwear (accused of desecrating the religious nature of the color in Hinduism).
Admittedly, there are perhaps a few more contestable areas to “Pathaan” outside of the laser-focused analysis of the bikinis involved. The film seems to toy with the idea of being sceptical about its hero's nationalism by making Jim a traitor of the Indian state, his neck tattoo reading “PATRIOT” feeling hopelessly ironic as he auctions off designer viruses to the highest bidder. But when the region of Kashmir is practically used as a damsel in distress in the finale, order has to be maintained and Mother India is always right, no matter the cost. “Pathaan” wears its jingoism on its sleeve, enabling its hero and its government to use torture to get the correct answers multiple times throughout the film, and when otherwise the action is so lively and entertaining, the wobbly moral implications of this piece of abject escapism ring a little false.
However, it's also difficult not to be won over simply by the charms of Shah Rukh Khan. His Pathaan is never too far away from a wind machine to make Khan's new luscious locks float dramatically in the breeze, and his signature glower is imbued with a sense that everything he physically does is important. It's a movie star performance through and through, positively oozing charisma, frequently self-congratulatory and packed full of hubris, but also self-aware enough to get away with being so smug. He starts the film piloting a helicopter indoors and ends it brawling in a house sliding down a mountainside, so if it's not completely evident that his star status has reached almost parodical levels, then welcome to Bollywood!
The film seems to hold a similar adoration for John Abraham, whose kissable villain ends up being framed like a hero; lots of slow-motion entrances, stylish tactical costumes and a banger of a theme tune (provided by composer brothers Ankit and Sanchit Balhara) are more than enough to solidify him as compelling a presence as his revered co-star. Deepika Padukone gets tasked with one too many twists for her character to really make an impression, in the character stakes in comparison to her male counterparts, but she still manages to shine in her quieter scenes with her “Om Shanti Om” co-star Khan.
It is Khan's show at the end of the day, and his triumphant return to the screens might just be the film big enough to oust “Avatar: The Way of Water” out of IMAX theatres the world over. Certainly the most bombastic early release of 2023, it's already made a massive splash in India in one week, immediately climbing the all-time charts to be the fifth highest grossing Hindi film of all time and THE highest grossing film of Khan's prolific career. The appetite for Khan as a screen presence is clearly bigger than ever, and with a fresh new look and a new spy franchise of his own now in full swing, it's hard to imagine audiences across the planet losing interest any time soon. As an action blockbuster, it's possibly too standard to snatch as much international attention as S.S. Rajamouli's 2022 phenomenon “RRR”, but for Khan, this is the definitive post-pandemic revival many will have been waiting for.
