New Delhi:
An ex-special ops agent enters what looks like a restaurant. Every seat has been taken. A man stops him at the entrance and says there is no room left. I will make room, the visitor says calmly and proceeds to crush the gathering.
how is that FatehActor Sonu Sood’s writing and directorial debut, Begin. No nonsense, brazen, in your face, ultra-violent. Take it or tie it. The gunfire and high body count should leave no one in doubt as to what the film has in store.
It delivers what it promises and delivers without fail. So, if you find this level of violence too shocking for comfort then leave your seat and walk out. A disclaimer at the beginning issues a warning to this effect. Then about halfway through another says: “Brace yourself, you’re going to need this break.”
This is the only respite the film has room for in the relentless cycle of violence. Fateh Singh (Sood), a one-man army man, doesn’t shy away from bringing his actions into the limelight.
The film sheds more blood than that in two hours Pushpa Joined its two long parts together. Its animalistic excess can put Animal In the shade. And while that’s going on, Fateh gets busy touring the world more than Jackie Chan’s action-adventure.
Fateh does not have any particular weapon of choice. He uses whatever he can get his hands on – automatic guns, revolvers, knives, cleavers, axes, hammers, anything that can kill without making any noise – and choreographed by Hollywood action director Lee Whittaker. Gaya takes a furious form (Pier Harbor, Die Hard, Fast & Furious 5,
The invincible hero’s dialogue is dry to the point of being minimalist, but the violence he inflicts involves unabashed glee. The havoc Fateh has wreaked is of the unabashedly maximalist, take-no-prisoners kind.
Needless to say, there is no dearth of amazing energy in the film. Nor does it lack any social purpose. However, it is unable to generate much mystery and intrigue. The identity and modus operandi of the bad guys, played deftly by Naseeruddin Shah and Vijay Raaz, are revealed quite early in the film, leaving no real scope for any kind of suspense.
The only point of interest is how Fateh will go about destroying the source of the malware it seeks to destroy. What works to the film’s advantage, especially in the first half, is that it never deviates from its blood-spattered course, even if Fateh is allowed the occasional emotional moment.
Fateh Singh was asked more than once, what do you do? He replies, Sabko janaan hai (Everyone wants to know). At the end of the film, someone says with alliterative emphasis: Jaan jaayegi to jaan jaayegi (If you know, you will die).
But don’t we need to know what the Infallible Man is doing? So, here goes. He is on a mission to dismantle a network of dangerous cyber criminals who run a fake loan app that targets financially deprived and unsuspecting middle class people, hacking their bank accounts and stealing their hard-earned money. They loot the earnings.
Fateh Singh goes on a string of countless murders until he reaches the evil mastermind, Raza (Shah), a former Indian spy who no longer takes orders from anyone. On the way, the crime buster meets another dangerous man, Satya Prakash (Raaz), who shows what he is made of by using metal chopsticks to stab a man to death.
Earlier, an abandoned single screen movie theater in Delhi served as the site of the massacre. There is an illegal call center in the hall which is maintained by Chadda (Akashdeep Sabir).
When Fateh walks in, the man he is looking for demands that he be left alone as he has a headache that could get worse. Crusader’s solution is, as expected, simple and is provided without your permission.
A villager from Punjab, unable to repay a loan on which the interest spirals out of control, dies by suicide. The girl who provided the loan facility went missing. Fateh Singh goes to Delhi and swings into action to find and punish the people behind the online fraud.
The relentless bloodshed that follows – reminiscent of the secret life that Fateh Singh, now a tidy supervisor of a dairy farm in a village in Punjab’s Moga city, has left behind – makes one start to feel nervous. Is.
When Nimrat Kaur (Shiv Jyoti Rajput) disappears without a trace the ruthless killing machine is forced to return to his old ways. Somewhere, he tells ethical hacker Khushi Sharma (Jacqueline Fernandez), who has come from London to try to get to the bottom of cyber crime, that her last mission was in San Francisco several years ago.
Now that he’s back from self-immolation, it’s clear he’s not out of touch. Fateh uses a diary to keep notes because, as he says, it can’t be hacked. Her past is also imprinted on her face and body in the form of tell-tale marks.
His style is clean, cut and dry, lacking all that is unnecessary. Like the lean, mean, sinister figure he is in the film, he is clinical and economical with his mannerisms and words, though any violence he enacts is presented as short-lived spectacle.
He neither wastes a bullet nor lets any blow or blow go waste. His incredible strike rate makes his death-defying efforts a bit predictable.
Shot by Italian cinematographer Vincenzo Condorelli, each stunt in Fateh is presented in a single, stunning flash, one after the other so fast that the brain and eye struggle to keep pace.
Sonu Sood has played the lead role without any frills which matches perfectly with the spirit and essence of the film. Naseeruddin Shah, Vijay Raaz and Dibyendu Bhattacharya (as a Delhi Police officer deployed to stop Fateh Singh) step in to quell Fateh’s frenzy. Jacqueline Fernandez has her moments but most are lost in the noise.
Fateh If clarity is not maintained then it is marked by circular motion. It’s surprisingly watchable, though some may find the carnage that the film perpetrates a bit of cinema, with thousands dying. The call is yours.
