After the light hearted yet emotional ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’, director Kabir Khan returns to the kind of action-thriller that he’s become adept at making. After ‘Kabul Express’ and the controversial ‘New York’, as well as an inter-spy agency love story with ‘Ek Tha Tiger‘, Khan’s next movie features a more dramatic story about terrorism and espionage, coupled with action and a theme that is very relevant to today. The first official Trailer for ‘Phantom‘ shows lead actors Saif Ali Khan and Katrina Kaif involved in an interesting political thriller with lots of action and high intense emotional drama. Based on the Mumbai attacks of 26/11, ‘Phantom’ is a fictional story centered around real world events and, as the tagline for the film suggests, it’s a story audiences will wish was true.
While another film revolving around the events of 26/11 has already been made by Ram Gopal Varma, titled ‘The Attacks Of 26/11‘, that film was more of a recreation of those events and the investigations that followed. ‘Phantom‘ on the other hand seems to provide a more fictionalized account of the aftermath of those bombings, told in the style of a high caliber spy movie, with Khan portraying the spy entrusted to dole out justice with a hit list of terrorists assigned to him. The trailer shows an international setting and foreign locales as well as both Khan and Kaif performing most of their own stunts.
‘Phantom‘ is adapted from the novel ‘Mumbai Avengers‘ by the author S. Hussein Zaidi who will be most recognizable to Bollywood fans from Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday‘, also adapted from a novel of his, as well as ‘Shootout At Wadala‘ by Sanjay Gupta. Working off of his story, the screenplay is written by director Kabir Khan and Parvez Sheikh, who also co-wrote the filmmaker’s ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan‘ as well as the 2014 hit ‘Queen‘. Kabir Khan himself has shown an excellent grasp of stories involving elements of inter- religious conflicts, nationalism as well as terrorism in almost all of his films from ‘Kabul Express, to ‘New York, and even the recent ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan‘. ‘Phantom‘ isn’t Saif Ali Khan’s first rodeo with this genre either, as he played a spy in Sriram Raghavan’s Desi Bond film ‘Agent Vinod‘. Even Katrina Kaif has been accustomed to the amount of intense stunts demanded of her from this film, given her experience with this director in ‘Ek Tha Tiger‘ where she also performed her own stunts, though not to this extreme.
‘Phantom‘ looks like a highly polished political thriller that becoming a sub genre in and of itself with recent films of the same genre like ‘D-Day‘ and ‘Madras Cafe‘. And with a director as talented as Kabir Khan behind the entire project and source material as acclaimed as the novelist Zaidi, ‘Phantom‘ is something to be looking forward to.
‘Phantom’ releases August 28th, 2015. Starring Saif Ali Khan and Katrina Kaif, directed by Kabir Khan.
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