Watched Pathaan recently after having read and heard a lot of controversy around it. The movie was excruciating long without any redeeming value but I was not able to appreciate why it became such a lightning rod back home. I have never played a video-game in my life so far be for me to opine on the quality or merits of any video-game. That said, the movie seemed to be like a video game to me - completely untethered from reality, logic, data, fact, and science. You are required to suspended disbelief and immerse yourself in the action the best you can. It seemed to be, having a player role is the right way to do it.
It was difficult to be in front of a screen for the whole time - I had to take a break and watch the last hour another time. Bollywood has produced movies lately that have interesting plot twists, arguably too many and too intricate sometimes. This one was interesting in that the end state was a foregone conclusion - the leading pair would be together so their interests and loyalties would obviously need to align. The unpatriotic guy would huff and puff a whole lot before going up in flames. All of that came to pass - just could have been wrapped up a third of the time. A Pathaan video game can run infinitely I suppose.
At the time of watching the movie, I was not aware that the orange bikini was problematic and the song. But that has to be attributed to my lack of basic understanding - if a person cannot tell orange and saffron apart then they should get re-educated before they do anything else. I had to wonder if a significant percent of the viewers were like me - so clueless that they entirely missed the infraction.
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