‘War 2’: The Spy Thriller That Forgot the Thrill

In 2019, Siddharth Anand’s War gave us answers. That, yes, a big, pulpy blockbuster could look slick enough to make your eyes dance. That the camera doesn’t just love Hrithik Roshan — it worships him in salt-and-pepper mode, an object of thirst so undeniable even Tiger Shroff’s stoic glare softens in submission. That Shroff, with his balletic precision and coiled physicality, could turn action into poetry — especially when put chest-to-chest with Roshan, eyes locked, breath mingling. And that somewhere between the beaches, bullets, and blatant homoerotic stares, mainstream Bollywood might have finally figured out how to make spy thrillers pure cinema. 

But six years later, its sequel, the Ayan Mukerji-directed War 2, leaves us only with questions. Why is a spy thriller doubling as a Horcrux search, flitting from one European city to the next? Why can’t Bollywood give its female characters something more than a digitally airbrushed bikini shot? How does one take a fantasy casting on paper — Roshan and Telugu superstar Jr. NTR (RRR) — and still sand it down until it feels paper-thin? To be clear, War 2 isn’t short on spectacle — there are dance-offs, CGI wolves a la Game of Thrones, plot twists, bloody stunts — but somehow it all collapses into a hollow, bloated echo of the swaggering fun its predecessor delivered in spades.