Attack
Starring John Abraham, Jacqueline Fernandez, Rakul Preet Singh
Directed by Lakshya Raj Anand
Rating: ** ½
John Abraham who not only stars but also takes credit as co-writer and co-producer in this crazily hurried political thriller about the Parliament under a terror attack, has some rewarding moments of humour in the otherwise drab adventure drama.
Initially when he is seen wooing air hostess Jacqueline Fernandez on a plane while travelling to god-knows-where ,he keeps giving her moontstuck looks and finally asks her name.When she tells him it’s Ayesha, he wants to know aage-peeche kya hai, meaning her surname.
“Just Ayesha,” drawls JF, “Like Madonna.”
How cool is that. Okay , another cool moment when cabinet adviser Prakash Raj comes to pay a visit to wheelchair-bound John Abraham a soldier who goes down(almost) during a clumsily staged airport attack, asks John chattily how things are going.
“Oh. Very hectic. No time at all,” John gives it back to the insensitive government official.
Attack has very few such smile-inducing moments. Most of the way it mows down all sense and sensibility for a gun-happy rampage about a task-force soldier who is fitted with some chip that gives him super-powers.
Really,now! If wishes were horses and if only such wish-fulfilment vessels made less sound and more sense. To director Lakshya Raj Anand and editor Aarif Sheikh’s credit the pace never flags. But that is not always a good thing. Oftentimes, pace is sacrificed for grace.And we end up looking at a stormraiser with its legs up in the air.
The awkwardness is especially noticeable in the scenes showing the cabinet politics. Once the Prime Minister is taken hostage, the boorish home minister(Rajit Kapur) takes over with all the tact of a bull in a China shop.
The one-man army theory is stretched to ludicrous limits. If you can buy into a wheelchair -bound soldier suddenly acquiring super-powers then you can have a spot of fun with the customized mayhem.Otherwise Attack looks like one more attempt by John Abraham to muscle into Akshay Kumar’s territory.
I liked the scenes between John and his screen mother played by the lovely Ratna Pathak Shah. They are shot in beautiful bluesy tones and convey the agile man’s anguish after being rendered immobile. After John is endowed with the ability to beat the shit out of the terrorists it is business as usual. Isn’t that what he was doing in his last film Satyamev Jayate 2 even without the chip in his brain, and on his shoulder?
The best performance in Attack comes from Serena Walia as the voice in John’s head. She is what the film aspires to be: smart and savvy.