Can ‘Pathaan’ be a new first for Shah Rukh Khan?

When it releases on January 25, 2023, 'Pathaan' will be Shah Rukh Khan's first film in theatres in four years.

From the cautionary “Apni kursi ki peti bandh lo, mausam bigadne wala hai” to the jingoistic “Jai Hind”, the star-tailored dialogues that the singularly starry Shah Rukh Khan delivers in his forthcoming film, Siddharth Anand’s Pathaan, are explicit clues to the kind of film it is.

A self-important, patriotic hero is on a mission to save the nation.

Notice the visuals for a moment, and you see what the world has already seen: Pathaan is a Bond-‘Mission Impossible’ pastiche in storytelling and visual artifice. There’s even a Bond-girl kind of sass about the character Deepika Padukone plays, grievously noted for wearing a saffron bikini for a second in one of the film’s mediocre songs - a Vishal-Shekhar composition.

In India, though, when a star as loved as Shah Rukh Khan leads a film, nobody cares about a Hollywood hacky. That’s for critics and cinema lovers.

The anticipation is big, and a lot is at stake with Pathaan.

For SRK himself, of course, whose last few films have been box-office fiascos: A Shah Rukh Khan film is hitting theatres after four years and it's his first out-and-out action film. In an interview just before the pandemic broke, Khan had said he was waiting to do an action film, and here it is. Many versions of the story of Pathaan are floating around on timelines; I am not venturing guesses. It doesn’t matter. What matters is how successful it can be for the star himself, in paramount need of a hit, and for the industry itself which needs a blockbuster now more than ever before.

And perhaps also for the Khan triptych legacy in Bollywood—the prodigious failure of the other two Khans in the last year demands a correcting, perhaps, because, for better or for worse, the three Khans are perceived as Hindi cinema’s box office GOATS since forever now.

At 57, SRK attempts a full-blown action thriller with ribbed abs, messiah-like long mane clumsily tied in a top knot; the masala histrionics can only be fortuitous because fans have missed him on the big screen.

Going by the advance ticket sales, amounting to a gross collection of Rs14 crore so far, according to trade reports, Pathaan will have one of the biggest openings in Khan’s 30-year career that began with the role of a lover obsessed with a woman who loses her singer husband at a young age in Raj Kanwar’s Deewana (1992). By then, he had already won Indians over with roles in 1980s’ stellar Doordarshan fiction programming such as Fauji and Circus.

The obsessive lover persona did not leave SRK for decades. No other star has done the romantic hero or the love messiah role better than him in Hindi cinema. Maya Memsaab, Baazigar, Darr, Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa, Anjaam, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Dil Se, Pardes, Dil Toh Paagal Hai, Mohabbatein, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, Veer-Zaara, Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, Om Shanti Om, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Chennai Express, his last hit Happy New Year eight years ago which opened with advance ticket sales of Rs40 crore — what is Shah Rukh Khan’s career if not for the winsome lover he has played over and over and over again, and Bollywood’s largest precursor to a lover’s bear hug that he perfected as a signature over the years?

For the first time, he is a suave spy—that too, a Muslim spy—who takes down enemies by hopping on moving vehicles and rappelling down skyscrapers, seducing a gorgeous woman while saving the nation from what looks like a John Abraham-led terrorist monolith.

Like everything in anodyne Bollywood, when Khan started speaking his personal politics aloud—a comment on growing intolerance a few years ago, in favour of Pakistani cricketers in IPL a few years before that—Hindu right-wing groups have made their displeasure obvious. The ire that the saffron bikini got proves the film, or possibly a Muslim titular hero who utters a haughty “Jai Hind” after defeating the enemy has already riled a lot of people. So yes, Khan’s image is not neutral as a lover boy or a symbol of love any longer. It’s acquired a communal gripe, his image anchored as much around his charm as his religious identity.

Not even a decade ago, Bollywood was a place that rested only on its ability to create overlong escapist movies—mostly with brain-dead escapist tropes. Entertainment has been its singularly lucrative currency. Now, more than ever before, the Hindi film industry is increasingly polarised. The mythological is king. And Khan happens to be one of the few stars in this exasperatingly lovable film industry who represents that past.

Made with a reported budget of Rs250 crore, with mammoth visual effects and stunts teams, the anticipation around Pathaan found grand expression when on a recent promotional visit to Dubai, the star unveiled the film’s trailer projected on the facade of the Burj Khalifa. Fan frenzy has peaked, and reports say there have been huge responses to advanced ticket sales in the US, UAE, Germany as well as Australia.

For a “content”-united world, thinking beyond old Bollywood action film tropes would logically work. Pathaan is Khan’s doff to Hollywood as much as it is to a Bond-style savage patriotism. The songs have a factory-style Bollywood brush. At the centre is a star whose professional life—and personal life too, perhaps, after the arrest of his son last year on fake charges of drug possession—depends, for the first time, on how much of a manly man he can be. The love is twisted this time, we’ll know on Republic Day onwards how much Shah Rukh Khan can swing this too.

Pathaan releases in theatres on January 25, 2023.