Sleeper Cell?
Holiday begins with a weak introduction where a family is waiting at the station for the hero to return home from his posting at the front. A train load of soldiers arrives and out hops Captain Virat Bakshi (Akshay Kumar), an army man who is back home to Mumbai for his holidays.
It seems that the director A. R. Murugadoss, had a drought of ideas as this itself was presented on the pretext of lack of auspicious occasion and so was the introduction of the heroine Sahiba (Sonakshi Sinha).
Immediately, on his arrival, his family takes him to see a bride, but he instantly feels the girl is too soft and an introvert. He is wrong, as sometime later, he finds out that she is actually a boxer and he is impressed. He is now fond of this girl, and with help of a friend (a police man – Sumeet Raghavan), he woos the girl.
The game begins when due to a quirk of fate when Captain Virat lays his hands on a sleeper cell operative planning a big terror strike, and the captain strikes back with his 12 batch mates who too were on a holiday in Mumbai. This anti social activity in the heart of Mumbai city gets him involved into something huge.
Rest of the story is how, Virat Bakshi being a patriot, lays his hands into the huge network of terrorism and then eliminating all the terror operatives with the help of his army buddies.
Then begins the cat and mouse game between the hero and the mastermind (Freddy Daruwala). It is skillfully presented how they draw each other out in the open.
Then comes the final confrontation. All very well. Even the premise of the story is very good, and the thought behind it was well intentioned. But it lacks in the execution and appears very shoddily presented.
With such a subject, if handled well it would have turned out to be an action thriller of cult proportion. That was a major let down.
The heroine part in the story is out of place, a caricature of a Mumbai Police Sub Inspector has become a norm of the day, all this to project that the hero was larger than life.
Holiday has a hackneyed humour which comes out unintentionally in the climax with the terrorist exulting the mastermind to just finish the game.
Akshay Kumar does his part well. It is difficult to find out flaws in his performance. Sonakshi Sinha isn’t given much to perform. Aackruti Nagpal makes her impressive comeback as Sonakshi Sinha’s sister. Debutant Freddy Daruwala leaves a mark.
The film pays a tribute to Indian Army’s fearless and courageous soldiers who even when not on duty, are dedicated and ever willing to sacrifice their lives for their motherland. And that’s it. Expect nothing more.
What could have been a fantastic product with an excellent packaging, with the star-cast and the canvas given to the director, looks like an abstract work of art mounted on a non-descript frame. It would only invoke the sleeper cells in the audience.
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Cast:
Akshay Kumar as Captain Viraat Bakshi
Sonakshi Sinha as Sahiba
Freddy Daruwala as Leader of Sleeper Cells
Sumeet Raghavan – Inspector, Mumbai Police
Govinda – Virat Bakshi’s Senior Commanding Officer
Zakir Hussain
Chirag Sethi
Aackruti Nagpal
Credits:
Banner – Reliance Entertainment, Sunshine Pictures Pvt. Ltd, Hari Om Entertainment Co.
Producer – Vipul Shah, Aruna Bhatia
Director – A. R. Murugadoss
Executive Producer – Aashin A Shah
Editor – Amitabh Shukla
Cinematography – N Natarajan Subramaniam
Music Director – Pritam Chakraborty
Lyricist – Irshad Kamil
Production Design – Sukant Panigrahy
Action – Greg Powell, Anal Arasu
Sound Design – Dileep Subramaniam
Casting Director – Honey Trehan
Choreography – Ganesh Acharya, Bosco Martis, Caesar Gonsalves