PHANTOM (U/A)
Director: Kabir Khan
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Katrina Kaif, Sabyasachi Chakrabarty, Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub
Running time: 148 minutes

Reality and imagination are seldom ever baked with the same yeast. So, if you show a man being shot dead in a film when that same man (successfully) demands a ban on the movie in Pakistan, the suspension of disbelief slips off far too quickly. Even if you call Hafiz Saeed... Haaris Saeed.

Based on Hussain Zaidi’s book Mumbai Avengers, Phantom is born out of the same wish fulfilment bank as D-Day. Like that 2013 Nikhil Advani film, this one tries to rouse patriotic fervour in the audience by snatching revenge from Pakistan. There Dawood Ibrahim was nabbed by the Indian officers; here the masterminds of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks are targeted.

Now, isn’t that the story of Neeraj Pandey’s Baby? Yes and no. Yes, that too involved counter-insurgent operations in the aftermath of the Taj attacks, but it primarily dealt with preventing fresh attacks. Here, the Indian intelligence is shown specifically going after the four people behind the 26/11 terror plot — Hafiz Saeed, Sajid Mir, David Headley and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.

Why is it called Phantom then? Because there is no team executing the unofficial mission here but one single Indian who lives somewhere in the mountains all by himself and has no connection with the world. “Bilkul Phantom ki tarah,” says a RAW member. 

And Mr Phantom has the same backstory as that of the younger brother in Warrior, which was carefully left out in Brothers a couple of Fridays ago. Daniyal Khan (Saif Ali Khan) was an armyman who was court-martialled because he left his unit to die, when actually he had gone to seek help.

So, to redeem himself, the man sets out on the whims of four desk guys in RAW, travelling to different parts of the world using different names to take out his targets. First in London, then in Chicago and finally in Pakistan, inspired by the CIA-led Operation Neptune Spear which eliminated Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad.

But Phantom is no Zero Dark Thirty. With his roots as a documentary filmmaker, Kabir goes to great lengths to make the preposterous — and very random —mission look plausible and he shoots the killings with great panache, but he’s unable to turn the targets into major national villains. Like an Osama or a Dawood. The newspaper clippings with the dull Om Puri voiceover at the start doesn’t scratch the past wounds bad enough.

The result is a sleek and stylish action thriller with not enough verve in the vendetta. Kabir turned a simple Pakistani-girl-lost-in-India tale into such an emotionally-charged journey in Bajrangi Bhaijaan but he struggles here to attach enough emotions to this blood-for-blood revenge saga.

Saif looks earnest as the no-nonsense Daniyal, distinctly different from his Agent Vinod. It helps that there is no hanky-panky with Katrina Kaif’s character, who is some sort of a fixer-cum-spy-cum-agent-cum-anything-that-justifies-more-footage. That she is first seen in London gives her the licence to mumble away that broken Hindi. It’s great to see Sabyasachi Chakrabarty in a major Bolly role after ages, as the RAW chief here.

Aseem Mishra, who also shot Bajrangi, shoots Phantom with gusto. Pritam’s songs used as fillers from one set-piece to another sound a tad stale except Afghan jalebi, which is the earworm of the soundtrack.

There’s nothing wrong with Phantom, just that its premise would have better suited as a tiffin-time chat between two school kids or morning-walk banter between a couple of old men or a Facebook status update. An entire film on what-could-be drops it into no man’s land — neither believably real nor unbelievably fantastical.

Pratim D. Gupta
Phantom worked/ didn’t work for me because.... Tell t2@abp.in