Starring: Akshay Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha
Director: A.R Murugadoss
Rating: Two stars
Holiday… The soldier is never on leave but conveniently excuses himself from a heated argument on how to nail a terrorist to attend to his stupid girlfriend who has far more stupid demands. The soldier is never on leave but he has all the time in the world to change into colourful clothes, zip to a deserted fort to dance with his ladylove. And this is just the tip of the bizarre iceberg.
Holiday ironically starts with the army man Virat (Akshay-forever-Khiladi-Kumar) who is on leave and comes back home to get married. He rejects the girl (Sabia) because, err, she has long hair and is coy. And later when he realises that the girl is not only a boxer but an athlete and a tennis player as well, (basically Olympics ki chalti phirti dukan), he changes his mind.
The main plot of the film consists of some sleeping cell agents. Sleeping cell who, you may ask! Umm… to put it into simple words, these are the people who have complaints, no no no, some serious grave complaints against the government. Except, they don’t write grievance columns in the newspaper, they, errr, believe it or burp, plant bombs at various locations and kill innocent people.
Virat, the army man deals with this notorious group and does his best to nip them in the bud. When he nails them down, he doesn’t hand them over to the police and let the judiciary take over. Instead he kidnaps them and stores them in his house. Thus there are no skeletons that tumble out of his closet but gagged and tied terrorists. The man has quite a variety of tastes in life I say! You-Kinky-Kumar-you!
The mastermind behind these terrorists is the joint secretary in defense. Why? Because he seeks a promotion at work, jump from the joint secretary position to the secretary position. Gosh! Is recession ne bado bado ko aatankwadi bana diya hain. Hmph!
The film is an unintelligent preachy tribute to our army men, time and again mocking the civilians and how they don’t do enough for the country. In a dramatic scene Virat uses his sister as bait to get to the terrorists. When she complains about her life being jeopardised, she is lectured on how army men are godsent, how civilians are always cynical watching TV and how we all must sacrifice our lives for Bharat Mata. Doing your job, paying bills and abiding by the rules are not enough… I am so guilty now. Kill me, KILL ME. I am a BAD CITIZEN. I don’t die for my country!
The terrorists on the other hand have a colourful notice board that boasts of detailed clean creative collages of cartoons jumping over fences and diving into the sea, hence reaching to earth-shattering conclusions about army men being great jumpers and swimmers. DAH! Not just that they also trace 12 important army men busting their plans by what they wore. There is a line that says, “America mein suit-pant aam baat hain, India mein nahi”. They all wore suit-pant, the dress code of a wedding!
The scenes between Akshay and Sonakshi are not only uninspiring but irritating. There are strange rules of their first date. Sample this: the boyfriend can demand anything of his girlfriend and she will have to oblige. Sonakshi-the-filmi-version-of-Karnam-Malleswari-Sinha in Holiday - A Soldier is Never Off Duty plays a different role. She is not playing just a bimbette but a boxer of a bimbette, the kind of boxer who slaps her father hard across his face because he wants her to get married. She flutters her eye lashes, pouts her painted lips and demands a kiss throughout the film but is never obliged. I am sure it’s got something to do with those hiding terrorists in Virat’s closet.
Akshay still struggles through his lines, is fab in action sequences and beats a dozen men to a pulp in a nanosecond. Well for a man who can lift the heavy duty boxer belle Sonakshi Sinha, fighting with a pack of gangsters is cakewalk.
The film has Mumbai monorail make its debut, Govinda play a strange cameo and a typical Akshay Kumar action-packed climax. If this excites you, go and watch Holiday – A Soldier is Never Off Duty. I surely want a holiday to recuperate from the three hour nonsense that mercilessly spooled out! Phew!
0 comments:
Post a Comment