Sooryavanshi is filled with so many cliches, it felt like I was watching a movie again even though I was watching it for the first time. The standard Bollywood masala movie template, full of misogyny and islamophobia. The movie starts with a montage and monologue which explains a very long story that is really hard to keep up with and just too many generic Muslim names. It explained how they were involved in 93 blasts, fled to POK, formed Lashkar, participated in Kargil War and then 26/11 happened. Since article 370 is scraped from J&K, these terrorists can do nothing in the valley so around 40 of them who are now living all over India and part of Lashkar’s Sleeper Cell have been activated.
The protagonist of the movie is officer Veer Sooryavanshi(played by Akshay Kumar). He is a supercop, daredevil, not afraid of anything. He gets shot and goes to the hospital where he meets Riya(played by Katrina Kaif) who is a doctor. Riya treats Sooryavanshi and they fall in love in the most predictable and generic way possible. They get married, have a child and start living the family life which was all shown in a song only. I would like to emphasise that in this whole movie the only person who even tried to act is Katrina Kaif. She performed the best out of all actors in the movie.
Moving forward in the story, the film overflowed with communal harmony. Sooryavanshi has Muslim officers working under him who go to dargahs, who pray for his well beings and Sooryavanshi loves and respects them. Sooryavanshi loves every Muslim who never complains and calls them ‘Asli Hindustani Musalman’. The film is full of super heavy-duty dialogues drenched in pure nationalism and communal harmony like “Iss desh mein jitni nafrat Qasab ke liye hai, utni izzat Kalam ke liye (In India, APJ Abdul Kalam is as respected as Ajmal Qasab is hated).” Even though the dialogue reduces a terrorist and one of the most loved presidents of India to the same level, nobody has an issue with it. Also the climax features Hindu Good Guys Heroes beating up Bad Muslim Terrorists while this super awesome Hindu Mantras are playing as background music. Nobody really cares about Islamophobia, right?
The movie is also full of action sequences typical of films by Rohit Shetty. There is a cameo of Singham and Simba as well, both heroes of prequels of the film. A lot of blasts, cars destroyed but somehow it fails to impress, everything feels repetitive. The film also fails to make use of so many fine actors like Kumud Mishra, Gulshan Grover, Abhimanyu Singh, Jackie Shroff and more. It also features Late Asif Basra in one of his last performances.
The film sets up the plot for the next Singham movie as well. The music was okay, there was nothing new there as well. There was the background music of Hindu Mantras when the good Hindu heroes were beating bad Muslim terrorists which again exposes the dynamics of Hindus and Muslims that the movie presented. Makers have tried to capitalise on the very famous and iconic song from Mohra. Overall the movie is bad, but since the theatres have opened after a very very long time, the film will do good. It is a barely 1 out of 5 star kind of film.