One of the biggest gripes that I had with Fateh was its writing, that seemed like a mismash of everything while aspiring to form an identity of its own. The characters are so poorly etched out that there is no way you are emotionally connected to them. For instance, Fateh (Sonu Sood) is a rehashed version of Tiger from Ek Tha Tiger and Pathaan from well….Pathaan, living a life of solitude in the ‘Pind’ of Punjab, while seemingly being embroiled in a cybercrime syndicate whilst being on the lookout for a girl who is kidnapped. The relationship is so skewed that you aren’t sure of what to make of it, even as a simple search branches into a country-wide threat from the syndicate. You see, this is the exact same point I had made in my review of Marco – two key ingredients of an R-Rated actioner is the emotional connect between the protagonist and the character stemming as his motivation, and the other, keeping the writing simple to allow the broader glories to be owned by the action. In case of Fateh, it is neither!

The cliches in the writing cannot be ignored too – you are introduced to Raza (Naseeruddin Shah), the cybercrime syndicate leader, living in a life of solitude with a pretty sidekick behind a large computer screen, while briefly engaging in kills of people who threaten to challenge his ‘organization’, and briefly cautioning his ‘Chinese’ worker to abstain from using chopsticks. Clearly, you can guess the next scene and the use of chopsticks towards the concerned character. This issue is dual here – not only are you making a character look like a caricature but also preparing the viewers on the next step of the characters, almost like an announcement. Likewise, some of the other characters look disinterested rather than intimidating – perfectly capable actors like Vijay Raaz and Dibyendu Bhattacharya enter and exit while having perfectly one notes to their respective characters.

The other issue with the writing is that it is largely unfocused and refusing to commit to a single track. So a trail of a missing character is quickly overlooked by how the cybercrime is a large looming threat of terrorism to the whole country, with countless faceless people being at the receiving end of the frauds. This ensures that the viewers never form an intimate and emotional bond with the characters, while only being exposed to gory action scenes. The writing also lacks coherence, given that it wishes to frequent the past of the protagonist bang in the middle of another country, without even remotely giving any context on the origin story of Fateh. It is left for the viewers to imagine and assume with identity, even as he conveniently hops countries only to gather information about certain characters, in a rather pointless fashion. The gimmicky interal block of coaxing the viewers to ‘take a break’, felt more promising than the action that followed!

The writing completely goes rogue with an incoherent and lethargic second hour that just jumps from one event to another. From an insipid and needless love-story to a surprise killing done with the intention of raising the stakes, but instead being downright laughable. I mean picture this – a character tied to an electric shock machine is streamed with the intention to be killed, and the catch being that the voltage will increase with every view on the stream. The logical approach would be for atleast the near and dear ones to refrain from watching it – but guess what, they do and cry while watching. How dumb could dumb be! This also brings be to the wonderful action block that you witness in the finale – sure it may be a mix of Animal, Old Boy and John Wick but it is incredibly well done leading to a brief redemption. But it kind of remains pointless when the protagonist needs to be reminded of his original mission of tracking down a character, halfway through the film. And that quite honestly, sums up the writing here.