'Pathaan', starring Shah Rukh Khan and featuring Johan Abraham as the main villain, was released in theatres today. Many critics feel that the big-ticket Bollywood film mimics a lot of Hollywood movies in terms of its tone, plotting, and execution.
Scroll said that Siddharth Anand’s film is a "heady cocktail of Mission: Impossibles and James Bonds past with nods to producer Yash Raj Films’ own espionage thrillers and screenwriter Shridhar Raghavan’s previous 'Agent Vinod'." This way, the film can also be said to have been inspired by homegrown action movies.
India Today said that the director serenades the "audiences with scenes and imagery that is a direct tribute to some iconic Hollywood films", adding that the film is a shadow of Robert Downey Jr’s 'Tony Stark'. The review adds that the climax and a few other action scenes "feel like blueprints picked from Hollywood films like 'Mission Impossible', 'Fast and the Furious' and others."
Film observer Nona Prince is not in awe of the movie. "The problem with 'Pathaan' is that it's a star affair more than a spy thriller, which was not the case with the director's previous movie 'War'. So many moments felt like a wannabe Hollywood movie. In many scenes, the execution didn't match the ambition," he wrote.
