Director Siddharth Anand
Stars Deepika Padukone, Hrithik Roshan & Rishabh Sawhney
Rated M
Score 6/6

Top IAF aviators come together in the face of imminent danger, to form Air Dragons. FIGHTER unfolds their camaraderie, brotherhood and battles, internal and external.

I didn’t see trailers for this at the cinema, I kind of stumbled across them for this one on YouTube and the little I read about the movie before getting a chance to watch Fighter it was described as a ‘Top Gun rip off’ that certainly seems to be the case but the filmmakers seemed to have taken inspiration from Top Gun and Top Gun Maverick (and perhaps even to a slight degree Looney Tunes Cartoons or if you prefer Hot Shots), though I don’t remember there being a disclaimer at the start of Top Gun or Top Gun Maverick. For those of you playing along at home, though I have watched bits and pieces of Indian movies in the past, Fighter is the first one that I’ve reviewed. Why has it taken so long? A combination of procrastination and that there hasn’t been a trailer that screamed out at me. Any suggestions for other Indian movies to watch?I certainly was surprised by the intermission after about the first hour, it was something that I certainly wasn’t expecting, I’ve only seen it in a handful of movies. Now it should be noted that both Top Gun and Fighter are both highly patriotic movies but I believe that Fighter says to Top Gun ‘You call that patriotism? … hold my beer’ Hrithik Roshan with his performance as Squadron Leader Shamsher “Patty” Pathania managed to successfully out-`Maverick” Tom Cruise. While Rishabh Sawhney was properly devious as Azhar Akhtar this role is what seperates Fighter from being dissmissed as a “Top Gun Rip Off”. I loved the final fight scene he had with Hrithik. The intensity outshines the Cruise’s fight sequences in his Reacher movies.  This entirely could just be a cultural thing, because different countries have different ways of telling the same story but i thought that given the sort of movie that Fighter is that Squadron Leader Minal “Minni” Rathore was one of the better written female characters in a “franchise” movie compared to western “franchise”movies.