m s

What were they thinking???? Complete load of bull$^@/×. Looks like the makers where under a really tight schedule. We know, from watching their other films that the cast was stellar but what ???? Here are my Pros - 1. Some comedic moments were a relief, especially the ones delivered by Diljit Dosanjh. 2. Pacing of the second half. That's it. Cons - 1. Sunny Ji absolutely hating doing this film. It is evident in many scenes. Not sure if he was injured during the filming but there are so many scenes where he isn't really standing upright, tilting to his left. 2. Varun Dhawan's absolutely incompetent delivery of stoicism. I mean, this man has done Badlapur. It has to be a really bad director to not be able to tap into that darkness. 3. Diljit Dosanjh being rushed in most scenes. I felt like he himself might have wanted more takes but the director wanted to move on. His acting prowess is unquestionable (i.e Udta Punjab for me). 4. Story flow - The screenplay is slow and the story is fast. It felt like some of Mithun Da's low budget stuff where scene set ups and slow and dragged but the actual scene itself that the audience are intrigued about is so rushed that it completely misses what it was about. 5. Editing - The film looks like it was cut and put together by a 5 year old cutting up a magazine to put a collage together. 6 Casting - The support cast was absolutely abysmal. Some performances were acceptable at best but most were comical when the scenes were serious and flat when trying to be funny. 7. Action set pieces - What on earth were these guys thinking ? First engagement where folks are hiding behind trees that are are a 3rd of their one body width, a village fight scene where tanks choose to navigate through a labyrinth of wooden houses instead of just blowing them into oblivion (looks like a poorly adapted, low budget version of the final act in saving private ryan, I'm absolutely insulting the Hollywood masterpiece here when I make the comparison), A stupid trench line idea in the middle of planes with Forrest cover on either side. 8. Character build up - This was done beautifully in Border 1 and absolutely destroyed in Border 2. What made us love the original was how engaging the lives of the characters were. This time around, there's no way the audience will feel invested in them. In summary, Border 2 is a shallow, flat, uninspired caricature of what was a glorious war victory for our country. Note: They probably had to change NDA - National DefenseAcademy (A historic institution) with NWA - National War Academy, cause they couldn't run this embarrassment of a film past Army Authorities. Avoid at any cost as such film making does not deserve any credit.

Giving it a 2 cause it is meant to be a masala film. Totally unreasonable and poorly executed action set pieces, surprisingly poor acting and absurdly confusing story telling. To enjoy this film, you need to leave your brains at home. I wish the filmmakers would have watched both the Farhan Akhtar Don movies to understand how style and action can be made to work. This direction craps up both. Also, who the freaking hell did the garbage background score?

Luke warm acting and stale direction in my opinion. Why do some actors think its ok to just get out of bed and don the uniform ? The scenes that involve Jhanvi Kapoor running are comical. A little prep might have really helped. The acting by the lead in general was unconvincing. The direction was no better. Near perfect action set pieces were let down by the absolute lack of the thing that makes audiences feel immersed. "Urgency". There was none. There was no anxiety or anticipation that a good action true story movie creates. This could have been an epic, 'against all odds' & 'fighting rampant gender bias' movie. Breaks my heart that a story with such excellent potential was treated this poorly. So many missed opportunities in one film. The subject of gender bias should be jarring but a lot more subtle. In this case however, the director went with 'In you face and repeat over and over'. There were so many parallels to another legendary film based on the same War - Lakshya. Albeit fiction it has a similar story line. If the director just watches these two films back to back, he will probably know what i mean about the missed opportunities. If you haven't seen it yet you won't miss much if you avoid it.

The movie isn't horrible. But it ain't good either. The biggest problems in my opinion were the unnecessary length of the film and total predictability of the second half. There were other issues too. The acting although acceptable, was not crisp at all. Some of the romantic scenes made me cringe. I could so totally picture Rajat Kapoor and Tabu/Swara Bhaskar totally doing these roles so much better. The film is plagued with some continuity issues as well. Some scene transitions seem too abrupt. I'd like to end by saying, they could have done better.