An Action Hero: Like Ayushmann Khurrana, the film is completely clueless about what it wants to be

But here’s the thing; this telephone conversation comes an hour and 20 minutes into the movie. By then, we’ve already seen Maanav foil the British police in a foot-chase; he’s been involved in approximately three shootouts, and has physically beaten up a man who very clearly used to be a ‘pehelwan’ in the past. For him to declare that he is capable of taking care of himself had already been communicated by the movie ages ago. So, why did writer-director Anirudh Iyer feel the need to pretend, all of a sudden, like Maanav is the underdog, like this phone call scene is some kind of grand moment of self-realisation?

It’s because the movie, like its protagonist, and by extension its lead star, has no idea what it wants to be. It presents a narrative of convenience. When the movie needs Maanav to be a hapless fool like Johnny English, that’s who he becomes, and when it needs him to magically turn into John Wick, that’s what he does.

In his first scuffle with Bhoora Solanki, the aggrieved brawler who is tailing him across the English countryside like a cross between the Terminator and Gaurav Chanana, we are led to assume that he’ll get beaten to a pulp. But somehow, Maanav taps into his training as an action movie star, and in fluidly choreographed movements, gets the better of Bhoora. He doesn’t seem surprised at his close-combat skills, it looks like he knew what he was doing. Even Jason Bourne was shocked to discover what he was capable of the first time he took down a goon in hand-to-hand combat. But not Maanav.

Later, in another face-off with Bhoora, it is revealed that he knows his way around a Glock. Again, it’s perfectly believable for a film actor who specialises in action to know how to handle guns; most of them — the good ones, anyway — are put through rigorous boot-camps.

So, it makes no sense when, in an attempt to escape this movie’s stand-in for Dawood Ibrahim (don’t ask) towards the end, Maanav barrels towards a window overlooking a river, and just… bounces off it. The goons that were chasing him chuckle to themselves. Crumpled on the floor and nursing his bruised arm, Maanav is supposed to be a laughing stock in this moment. But this happens deep in the film’s third act, after we’ve already seen him leap across buildings and wrestle an actual wrestler. This is after he’s had that phone conversation with Roshan. Only moments later, he’ll shoot a man in the face at point-blank range. And we’re supposed to believe that he wasn’t able to bum-rush a window? “Sheesha toh toota nahi tere se,” discount Dawood says mockingly some minutes later.

It’s a sign of poor writing when characters ignore who they are at their core and transform into entirely different people purely because the script requires them to. Raveena Tandon’s terrible Netflix show Aranyak is a memorable example of this irritating trope. But even Aranyak showed some restraint.

What’s strange is that initially, Maanav is projected as some kind of parody of a self-involved movie star. He throws a tantrum because he didn’t get the sports car that he wanted; he openly disrespects his producer and he seems incapable of doing his job unless he’s tricked into it. It’s only after he lands in England that the movie begins to send Maanav down a redemption arc. The exact moment that you sense this is happening is when he refuses to let his spot boy take the fall for him.

This is because Bollywood movies are still cripplingly preoccupied by crafting ‘likeable’ protagonists, as if Amitabh Bachchan himself will announce his retirement if Hindi movie heroes dare to have a laugh at their own expense. An Action Hero doesn’t pause to examine Maanav’s psychological breakdown, or the moral implications of his actions, because it is more interested in projecting itself as a cat-and-mouse thriller. Maanav keeps insisting that he didn’t intentionally kill Bhoora’s brother, but he doesn’t have to. We know that the guy’s death was an accident. And that’s the fundamental issue with the film’s premise. The audience doesn’t think of him as a murderer either. Instead, we see him as a coward who ran away from the ‘mauka-e-vardaat’. But Maanav doesn’t seem to realise the difference.

Combined with Iyer’s problematic call to portray both Solanki brothers as ego-driven Jat stereotypes, An Action Hero pretends like Maanav is the one who has been wronged, and not the guy whose brother he left for dead by the roadside. Does both Solanki brothers’ arrogance make them the villains in this scenario? Definitely not, but that’s not what An Action Hero wants you to think. In the moral universe of the film, Maanav goes scot-free, while Bhoora dies a terrible death, like his brother.

An Action Hero has no identity. There’s a certain smugness to it that comes across as irritatingly nihilistic. Like Maanav, it is eager to point fingers at everybody else, but is entirely unwilling to introspect. It’s either the media’s fault or the public’s fault; poor Bollywood is always the victim, Iyer’s film suggests. Even this Sanju-esque stance would’ve been forgivable had An Action Hero been an ounce of fun, but the humour is forced, the satire is toothless, and the meta-commentary pedestrian. Are we really going to pretend that making fun of Arnab Goswami and the TV news media in this day and age is an act of bravery?

Perhaps everybody overanalyzed its box office failure. It had nothing to do with Khurrana’s uncertain position in the ecosystem, nor does it have anything to do with the shift in viewing patterns in a post-pandemic world. Here’s an idea: perhaps it simply wasn’t good enough.