An ex-special ops agent walks into what looks like a restaurant. Every seat is taken. A man stops him at the entrance and says there is no space left. I’ll create space, the visitor says coolly and proceeds to mow down the gathering.
That is how Fateh, actor Sonu Sood’s writing and directing debut, kicks off. No-nonsense, unabashed, in-your-face, ultra-violent. Take it or lump it. The flurry of bullets and the high body count should leave nobody in any doubt about what the film is out to deliver.
It does deliver what it promises and does so without let. So, leave your seat and head to the exit if you find this level of violence too shocking for comfort. A disclaimer at the outset issues a warning to that effect. It is followed up with another one at the halfway mark: “Brace yourself, you will need this break.”
That is about the only breather the film has room for in its unrelenting cycle of violence. Fateh Singh (Sood), a one-man army, makes no bones about letting his deeds do most of the talking.
The film spills more blood in two hours than Pushpa did over its two protracted parts put together. Its animalistic overdrive could put Animal in the shade. And while it is at it, Fateh indulges in more globe-trotting than a Jackie Chan action-adventure.
Fateh has no particular weapon of choice. He uses whatever he can lay his hands on – automatic guns, revolvers, knives, cleavers, axes, hammers, anything that can kill without much ado – and goes on a rampage choreographed by Hollywood action director Lee Whittaker (Pear Harbor, Die Hard, Fast and Furious 5).
The invincible hero’s dialogues are curt to the point of being minimalist but the violence he dishes out is attended by no-holds-barred glee. The havoc Fateh wreaks is of the an unabashedly maximalist, take-no-prisoners kind.
Needless to say, there is no dearth of visceral energy in the film. Nor does it lack a social purpose. It is, however, unable to generate much mystery and intrigue. The identity and modus operandi of the bad guys, played with finesse by Naseeruddin Shah and Vijay Raaz, are revealed pretty early in the film, leaving no real scope for any edge-of-the-seat suspense.
The only point of interest revolves around how Fateh will go about the job of dismantling the source of the malware he is out to destroy. What works to the film’s advantage, especially in a taut first half, is that it never strays from its blood-splattered course even though Fateh is allowed an occasional emotional moment.
Fateh Singh is asked more than once Tum karte kya ho (what do you do)? Sabko janna hai (Everybody wants to know), he replies. Late in the film, somebody is told with alliterative emphasis: Jaan jayogi toh jaan jayegi (you’ll be dead if you get to know).
But don’t we have to know what the infallible man is up to? So, here goes. He is on a mission to bring down a network of dangerous cyber criminals who run a fake loan app that targets financially disadvantaged and unsuspecting middle-class folk, hacks into their bank accounts, and robs them of their meagre hard-earned money.
Fateh Singh leaves a trail of countless kills until he reaches the evil mastermind, Raza (Shah), a former Indian spy who now takes orders from nobody. Along the way, the crime-buster has to reckon with another dangerous bloke, Satya Prakash (Raaz), who shows the stuff that he is made of by using a metal chopstick to stab a man to death.
Earlier on, an abandoned single screen movie theatre in Delhi serves as the site of a massacre. The hall houses an illegal call centre supervised by Chadda (Akashdeep Sabir).
When Fateh barges in, the man he is looking for demands that he be left alone because he has a headache that could get worse. The crusader’s solution is, expectedly, simple and delivered without so much as a by your leave.
A Punjab villager, unable to repay a loan on which the interest balloons out of control, dies by suicide. The girl who facilitated the loan goes missing. Fateh Singh heads to Delhi and swings into action to find and punish the people behind the online fraud.
The persistent bloodletting that follows – it harks back to the undercover life that Fateh Singh, now a clean-cut supervisor of a dairy farm in a village off Punjab’s Moga town, has left behind him – tends to get on one’s nerves.
The ruthless killing machine is forced to return to his old ways when Nimrat Kaur (Shiv Jyoti Rajput) disappears without a trace. Somewhere down the line, he tells ethical hacker Khushi Sharma (Jacqueline Fernandez), who has flown down from London to try and get to the bottom of the cybercrime, that his last mission was in San Francisco several years ago.
Now that he is back from self-imposed oblivion, it is clear that he isn’t out of touch. Fateh uses a diary to keep notes because, as he says, it cannot be hacked. His past is also imprinted on his face and body in the form of telltale scars.
His style is unfussy, cut and dried, shorn of all that is inessential. Like the lean, mean, sinewy film he is in, he is clinical and economical with his methods and words although all the violence he perpetrates is mounted as short-winded spectacle.
He does not waste a bullet nor let a blow or thrust go begging. His incredible strike rate tends to make his death-dispensing forays a touch predictable.
Every stunt in Fateh, shot by Italian cinematographer Vincenzo Condorelli, is delivered in a single, stunning flash, with one following the other in such quick succession that the mind and the eye struggle to keep pace.
Sonu Sood delivers a no-frills lead performance that is perfectly in sync with the spirit and substance of the film. Naseeruddin Shah, Vijay Raaz and Dibyendu Bhattacharya (as a Delhi police officer detailed to stop Fateh Singh in his tracks) step in to dial down the frenzy Fateh exudes. Jacqueline Fernandez has her moments but most are lost in the din.
Fateh is marked by dizzying momentum if not sustained clarity. It is surprisingly watchable even though some might feel that in the carnage that the film unleashes, cinema dies a thousand deaths. The call is yours.
