Slow for a thriller

Phantom

Cast: Saif Ali Khan & Katrina Kaif

Rated: 5/10

26/11 capers were always the thing to do in Bollywood. But this one, to say the least, is audacious. It plays to the gallery of avenging the dastardly attack on India by going into enemy territory and liquidating — under cover of course — the perpetrators of 26/11 who are enjoying their freedom and patronage in neighbouring Pakistan.

Such capers are usually thrillers and Saif has earlier too been in some such trans-national spy-kill-terror mounts (Agent Vinod). However, he and the director, for some unexplained reasons, takes it very slow in this one. The result is that even though the subject is pulsating, the means to get to it is rather unhappening.

From America to london to Kashmir to Beirut to Pakistan — it’s a journey under cover agent Danial Khan takes to kill all 26/11 masterminds, including David Hadley in an American Jail and Maulana in Pakistan.

Even though the terrorist on target are real, the entire operation is so unreal and fantastic that even our RA&W agents would be surprised they were regarded capable of it. Saif walks through the role and Katrina Kaif, as a global security agent undercover from RA&W, is a neither here nor there character in a film that could have done so much better only if it had been faster and slicker.