Ek Tha Tiger dares to be refreshingly different. Lo and behold we finally have a script or something closer to that in a Salman Khan movie. No pun intended :) Salman Khan plays the role of Tiger, a RAW (acronym for India's external Intelligence agency Research & Analysis Wing) agent. While not executing his missions across the world, tiger finds his relaxation in a middle class neighborhood in Delhi doing the regular chores like waking up in the morning to the doorbell from a milk vendor, inviting his boss over for a home made dinner and not to mention with his well toned body drawing oohs and aahs from the house wives much to the discomfort of their envious husbands.
Tiger meets his match in ISI agent Zoya (Katrina Kaif). The presence of Girish Karnad (after a long time) as Shenoy (head of RAW) and Ranvir Shorey (Gopi) as Salman's colleague is what lends gravitas to the movie. Shenoy's and Gopi's characters inject a touch of realism and some credibility to the story line.
Music by Sohail Sen and Sajid-Wajid is passable except for the penultimate song "Mashallah". What however deserves praise is the action scenes executed in overseas locations based in United Kingdom, Turkey and Cuba. Katrina who looks drop dread gorgeous gets to kick some ass and convincingly at that.
My memorable moments from the movie are when Shenoy says to Gopi "Duniya mein 201 desh hain aur use sirf Pakistan ki ladki se pyar hona tha" translated into English implies "out of 201 countries in the world you didn't get anyone else to fall in love other than one from Pakistan" or the scenes where in Tiger remembers his past missions when asked about questions regarding his marriage or his love for dogs.
The only disappointment with the movie is that it skims only the surface of the serious issues involved and doesn't take a stand. Anyways I guess it's too much to expect from a Salman movie :)
To sum it up this tiger doesn't belong to the wild, it belongs to somewhere else :)
(Image courtesy: http://media1.santabanta.com/full1/BollywoodMovies/EkThaTiger/ek-tha-tiger-6a.jpg)
