FILM REVIEW: War 2: Looks expensive, feels empty

Cast: Hrithik Roshan, N. T. Rama Rao Jr. and Kiara Advani

Director:   Ayan Mukerji

Platform: In Cinemas

Rating out 5: ★★

Some films want to take you somewhere. They want to pull you into a place, let you breathe its air, feel its tension, lose yourself in the rhythm of the story. War 2 wants to do that. It thinks it’s doing that. But somewhere along the way, it leaves its own plot behind like a misplaced passport. What you get instead is a glossy highlight reel of expensive locations, photogenic people, and large-scale set pieces that look like they belong on a recruitment video for the world’s most glamorous mercenaries.

It’s not that it’s unwatchable, it’s just hollow.

On paper, the story is built for high-stakes drama. A covert global organisation called “Kali” has its sights set on assassinating the Indian Prime Minister. There’s Kabir, played by Hrithik Roshan, a man of lethal skill and unreadable intent, and Vikram, played by Jr NTR, a force of his own with equal amounts of swagger and discipline. Between them stands Kavya, played by Kiara Advani, a woman carrying grief and a personal vendetta after the death of her father. The set-up suggests deception, betrayal, shifting loyalties, and an eventual showdown between two formidable forces. That’s the promise. The execution is another matter.

The plot drifts in and out of focus like a bad connection. One moment you’re in Amsterdam, the next in Manali, then Valencia, Yas Island, Davos and each location rendered in postcard-perfect detail. These backdrops could be the stuff of cinematic dreams, but they’re never used to deepen the story or trap the characters in situations that matter. The film collects destinations like stamps on a passport but forgets to fill in the pages in between. What should feel like a relentless pursuit of justice or revenge ends up playing like a travel montage. The stakes are supposed to be global, yet they never feel personal, never urgent.

That’s not to say it doesn’t look good. The production design is pristine, the cinematography polished to the point of gleam. Action scenes are staged with precision, each fight and chase clearly storyboarded and executed with technical skill. Slow-motion hero shots land exactly where they’re meant to, lighting is good, costumes sharp. But there’s an emptiness behind it all, a sense that style has completely smothered substance. It’s like watching a perfectly timed stunt you’ve already seen in a dozen other films. You can appreciate the mechanics, but you feel nothing.

Roshan and Jr NTR do what they can. They’re sometimes magnetic presences, actors who know how to own a frame and hold an audience’s attention. But they’re working with characters that have no layers, no contradictions, no humanity under the surface. Kabir and Vikram aren’t people, they’re outlines of people. You can see the poses, the perfectly choreographed scowls, the meaningful glances. But you never believe there’s a life beyond the lens. When the camera cuts, it’s as if the characters cease to exist. You admire them from a distance, the way you might admire the exterior of a locked building with clean lines, expensive materials, but no idea what’s inside.

There are moments that should work. A duel staged in a crowded square has the kind of tension you hope the rest of the film will maintain. A sudden twist hints at a story with more ambition than it lets on. But these moments are isolated, disconnected from any real momentum. Instead of building toward a crescendo, the film resets after each big beat, starting from scratch again and again. The audience is left chasing after a story that keeps slipping through their fingers.

Kavya’s arc is the clearest example of missed potential. Introduced as a woman driven by revenge, she’s given the kind of emotional motivation that could ground the whole narrative. But halfway through, she’s side-lined. Her presence becomes incidental, her agency dissolved. The one character who could have given the film emotional weight instead becomes a footnote.

The second half tries to inject life by rolling out backstory, revealing motives and histories that might have meant something if they’d been seeded earlier. By this point, though, the film has already lost its grip. You can’t retroactively invest the audience in characters they’ve been kept at arm’s length from for the past hour. The structure feels like a series of set pieces strung together by exposition rather than a story unfolding with inevitability.

The soundtrack doesn’t do much to help. In a film like this, music is meant to be a driving

force, lifting the action, pushing the emotion, giving each key moment its own sonic fingerprint. Here, it’s forgettable. “Aavan Jaavan” comes closest to landing, a track with enough atmosphere to make you take notice, but it’s an exception. “Janaab E Ali,” clearly designed as a crowd-pleaser, feels flat and underwhelming. You think back to the first War and its shot of pure energy in “Jai Jai Shiv Shankar” and realise how little War 2 offers in terms of musical adrenaline. The songs feel slotted in rather than born from the narrative.

The globe-hopping visuals are the film’s most consistent strength, but they’re also its biggest crutch. Sweeping aerial shots of city skylines, dramatic coastlines, neon-lit streets, they’re stunning, but they’re not enough. A location should be more than a backdrop; it should shape the action, influence the mood, and force the characters to adapt. Here, they’re just decorative. You could swap Amsterdam for Abu Dhabi, Davos for Dubrovnik, and it wouldn’t change the story one bit.

By the time the credits roll, you’re ready to move on. And then comes a mid-credits scene that, frustratingly, is more engaging than anything in the main film. Suddenly, there’s a jolt of energy, a suggestion of a bigger world, sharper stakes, and a reason to care. It’s the kind of tease that should have been the film’s opening act, not its closing note. Instead, it serves as a reminder of what the film could have been if it had trusted its own potential.

War 2 is a case study in how throwing money, talent, and scale at a project doesn’t guarantee a compelling result. Everything is in place: charismatic leads, an international canvas, a premise with built-in tension. But without a script that digs into character, without pacing that builds rather than stalls, without a heartbeat running underneath the spectacle, it’s just noise. The actors commit, the crew delivers on the technical side, but it all serves a hollow centre.

Two stars out of five because it’s not incompetent, just misguided. It’s the kind of film you can watch with half your attention while doing something else and not miss much. You’ll remember the faces, maybe a location or two, but not a single line of dialogue or emotional beat will stay with you. It’s cinema that’s content to look like it’s working hard while barely moving forward.