Tiger (Salman Khan) is sent on a mission by his new boss Ms. Menon (Revathi) to save an old friend. He succeeds partially in the mission and gets a shocker of an information which shakes him. Enter the baddie Aatish Rehman (Emraan Hashmi) who used to be the mentor of Zoya (Katrina Kaif). The past and present get entangled, making things too personal for Tiger and Zoya. How they get out of this mess created by Aatish and save Pakistan out of all in the silliest plot the writers came up with, forms rest of the story.
There is nothing much to write about the story or the screenplay, as even writing too little is gonna reveal the entire thing. So let me be blunt in saying, it falls under the silliest of the stories written and there is not much hope for the spyverse as far as the writing department goes. The film starts with Mission Time Pass and ends up being one thanks to the overload of action segments completely driving the second half.
For the kind of hype they created, the first half action scenes aren't that extraordinary. The second half thankfully has the action set in indoors without much distraction from poor CGI like in Pathaan and much of it being hand to hand combat helps in the film's favor. Salman Khan is almost a demigod on the big screen when it comes to action films and he aces with his sheer screen presence. Katrina Kaif gets to shine too until she is given the kind of dialogues which she gets pulled down while trying to pull them off. Emraan Hashmi was actually really good as Aatish but his characterization can be easily interchangeable with John Abraham's Jim and none would notice the difference. I was genuinely happy to see Simran sharing screen space with Bhai.
In their minimal effort to create a throwback to Zoya's origin story to even Tiger-Zoya's origin story, the writers eventually resort to playing safe than explore it better. They even resort to extreme violence in the third act which works for the film but mind you, this went too dark and too violent, which to an extent felt overdone. Lastly, the Pathaan segment where much of the efforts were put in. Sadly, taking the word which is being thrown around Tiger 3's pre-sales, the Pathaan's cameo was anything but organic. But it was sheer fan service, glorifying Shah Rukh in one shot and immediately following up with glorifying Salman so as to not offend any fanbase. These 10mins were fun and then the film goes on non-stop action mode.
Overall, I will be a bit harsh as I am against usage of national Anthem as a gimmick which this film uses and I am not on board with it. We all stood up during it bur hopefully filmmakers avoid this in future. The nation might be divided but neither Salman nor Shah Rukh or even Aamir need this sort of gimmick in their films. The action set pieces in the final act works, enjoy the film for that but the story gets way too silly so one has to ignore that to find this film to be a thorough Time Pass.
As a fan, Bhai entertained me but Bhai deserved a better film and the wait for such a film continues.
