Review: EK THA TIGER And The Messy Art Of Modern Masala

While I may not be his biggest fan, there is no denying that Salman Khan is the very definition of the Bollywood hero. The Indian film world has its own vocabulary, and it takes a while to get it down, but "hero" is one of the most basic terms that you'll come across in any conversation with a fan. In this context, the hero is the leading man of the film, or really any male star, on or off set. The hero is bigger than life, his action scenes are the most intense, and most importantly, he always wins.

Kabir Khan's Ek Tha Tiger is a textbook example of the current state of popular Hindi film. There is an eternal tug of war going on, (mostly in Bollywood, not so much the regional cinemas) between the urge to modernize and connect Hindi film to the outside world and the conservatives who see masala as an untouchable cultural totem that gives Indian cinema a unique place in the world. That struggle is very clearly illustrated in Ek Tha Tiger, as Kabir Kahn, the director of two gritty mainstream films about terrorism, Kabul Express and New York, takes a detour from his usual seriousness into the safer territory of the mass-market entertainer.

Ek Tha Tiger is a tough film to synopsize. Any details I give concerning events taking place after about 40 minutes would be huge spoilers. That being said, the basic set up is that Salman Khan plays Tiger, an agent of RAW, the Indian intelligence agency. Tiger is a no-nonsense agent who is assigned a gig in Dublin shadowing a scientist who has happened upon a potentially dangerous discovery. In his attempt to gain access to this scientist, Dr. Kidwai, he meets with the caretaker of the good doctor's home, played by former Khan's real-life former flame Katrina Kaif as Zoya. Against his own better judgement Tiger begins to fall for Zoya, and anything further than that I really cannot disclose. Top secret stuff.

The plot sounds dangerously close to Salman's 2011 Eid blockbuster, Bodyguard, in which he plays a bodyguard for a girl played by Kareena Kapoor, with whom he falls in love. However, Ek Tha Tiger is a significantly better film than that, simply by virtue of the fact that Kabir Khan is a better director than the Malayalam import, Siddique. However, Kabir Khan doesn't stay completely clear of silly masala conventions, which is both a plus and a minus for Ek Tha Tiger.

The film's tone is wildly erratic, as is the case with most masala films. The genre switches from romance to action to broad comedy and back in the blink of an eye, this is one of the most jarring aspects of Bollywood film for outsiders, but once you learn to roll with it, it becomes part of the allure. Ek Tha Tiger is not a "gritty" film, it is designed to entertain, there are no higher aspirations here, and really, none are needed. What Kabir Khan has done with this complicated story is to deliver exactly what the audience of a Salman Khan Eid release is expecting, crazy intense action, big catchy songs, and a forty-something man wooing a twenty-something woman. The end.

One of the things that makes this film so successful is Kabir Khan's submission to the tropes of the masala film without attempting to pander to the neo-masala trend characterized by films like Rowdy Rathore and Singham. The audience wants big flashy dance numbers, he delivers. The audience wants exotic locales, how about Dublin, Thailand, Istanbul, and Havana? The audience wants Salman Khan to punch someone through a window, we've got you covered. Don't we need to see Sallu take his shirt off? Of course we do, but they wait on that one till late in the game. The trick is to make the film intense and entertaining without turning it into a complete cartoon, and Kabir Khan manages the balancing act pretty well.

One trick from the masala playbook that is as old as Hindi cinema itself is the exotic location shooting, and Ek Tha Tiger puts together some of the most fantastical sequences I've seen in a while. Indian audiences expect and reward escapism in their mainstream films, to that end location shooting is unlike what we see in American films. About 90% of foreign shoots look like ads from a tourism board, countries are made to seem like a parody of themselves. Whatever the most broad generalization of a particular location may be, you can guaran-goddam-tee that it'll be on screen, The song shoot in Dublin features at least a dozen people dancing while dressed up as leprechauns, in Havana there are the old men in tank tops and classic cars, etc. This is nothing new, but these sequences designed to introduce the audience to the new setting are always a bit off putting for newcomers, though Ek Tha Tiger handles them pretty well, apart from the overall goofiness of the thing.

Salman Khan's last five films have fit neatly into the South Indian style neo-masala mold, thankfully Ek Tha Tiger bucks that trend handily and turns out to be his best film in years. Gone are the stolen songs from South Indian hits (Arya 2's Ringa Ringa became Ready's Dhinka Chinka, and so on), gone is the over the top wire work, gone are the punch dialogues. In their place is a well paced action romance with touches of comedy. Sure, one or two of the montage inspired song numbers could be cut, but even those have their place here. Ek Tha Tiger is among the better films in this style in a long time. Better than Rowdy Rathore, better than Singham, better than most of the recent crop of masala films, Ek Tha Tiger is a solid piece of work from a director who was suspected of slumming it for this outing.

Does Ek The Tiger break any new ground? Certainly not. It is nowhere near as good of a film as Karan Malhotra's Agneepath or SS Rajamouli's Eega. However, it does deliver on it's promise better than most and proves that even with only one facial expression, Salman Khan can command the screen like few others, and when he jumps a motorcycle in an absolutely jaw-dropping action sequence toward the end of the film, he definitely earned the roars of approval he got from my opening night crowd.