In Kabir Khan’s thriller, David Coleman Headley is dead and other nationalistic fantasies come true.
Stop the presses: David Coleman Headley is dead, the plotters of the November 26, 2008, attacks in Mumbai have been extinguished, and anybody who believes that India is a soft state can go to Pakistan.
Saif Ali Khan’s ex-army officer teams up with Katrina Kaif’s security analyst to cull targets that include Headley, the Pakistani-American double agent who conducted the reconnaissance mission that preceded the attacks on the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station, and the head of the Laskhar-e-Toiba, the Pakistani terror group that executed the operation. The screenplay by Khan and Parveez Sheikh does not even bother to change Headley’s name, but since the real person is currently serving a lengthy prison sentence in America, he presumably cannot sue.
At least LeT chief Hafiz Saeed is rechristened Harris Saeed. But here too, the physical resemblance is striking enough to cheer dispirited Indian taxpayers who have been vexed by the same question that has haunted filmmakers of late: Why can’t we be like America and Israel and hunt down our enemies?
Israel went after the Palestinian terrorists involved in the deaths of 11 of its Olympic team members in Munich in 1972, while America avenged the September 11, 2001, attacks by gunning down Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden in his Pakistani hideout in 2011. Both these events were fodder for Hollywood movies.
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