Tiger Zinda Hai movie review & film summary (2017)

Arguably, what's most refreshing about "Tiger Zinda Hai" is that its creators don't just pay lip service to their characters' humanitarian values, and ideas like the makers of "Ek Tha Tiger" did. For starters, "Tiger Zinda Hai" is essentially an ensemble film headlined by co-stars Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif. This is no small feat since "Ek Tha Tiger" feels like a Salman Khan vehicle that also features Kaif. Think of the way that the recent "Ocean's Eleven" films are pretty much "putting on a show"-style musicals with more casino heists, and less dancing. In those films, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon put their guys in place, and then let them do their respective things.

That's what "Tiger Zinda Hai" is like, only instead of robbing Al Pacino and Andy García, these guys try to free a group of 25 Indian and 15 Pakistani nurses from a group of Syrian/Iraqi fundamentalist kidnappers/terrorists. Indian bureaucrat Shenoy (Girish Karnada) knows that only one man can stop the terrorists, and their cartoonishly vindictive leader Abu Usman (Sajjad Delafrooz). And that man is Tiger (Khan), a retired Indian super-spy who at the end of "Ek Tha Tiger" eloped with, rather than neutralized, his Pakistani super-spy wife Zoya (Kaif).

True to cornball formula, Tiger returns from retirement—"somewhere in the Alps"—after briefly considering the consequences of returning to a violent but efficient life of shooting, stabbing, and exploding enemy combatants. Still, Zoya and their young son Junior (Sartaaj Kakkar) give Tiger the green light, so he goes ahead, and assembles a crack team comprised exclusively of war movie cliches (The dynamite expert! The sniper! The hacker!). Thankfully, Zoya and her own team of Pakistani spies join Tiger mid-way through the film's hefty 165-minute proceedings. At this point, the group's members put their political differences aside, and vow to work together for the sake of, uh, all "humanity."