Fateh Review: Sonu Sood battles against logic while Jacqueline Fernandez tests our patience

Fateh poster

Three years after his last Hindi film was released, Sonu Sood decided to come up with a film named Fateh, and we wonder why. The movie revolves around a guy named Fateh, of course played by Sonu Sood, who works for an intelligence agency nobody knows about or cares to explain.

Years after Fateh has completed his last mission for the country, he decides to go back to his old self to save a girl, Nimrat, his neighbour, who has been trapped in the web of people running online frauds. Now, to save Nimrat, Fateh must uncover the truth, and to help him in this mission, we have Khushi, played by Jacqueline Fernandez.

What went wrong?

This approximately 2-hour-long film starts with an action sequence where Fateh is killing hundreds of people, and nobody is able to touch him. The movie then goes back in time to show what led Fateh to reach this stage and why he is so angry and frustrated. Well, Fateh's fight is against the people behind this dark world of online fraud, and on his radar are the bosses played by Vijay Raaz and Naseeruddin Shah.

Before talking about their characters and performances, a genuine question arises: what did their paycheck look like? What made actors of their caliber sign a film like this? No doubt they performed their scenes nicely, but the dialogues - what even? If you ask a student from 8th grade to write dialogues and make sure they rhyme, they will look like:

"Agli baar kirdaar imaandaar rakhna, janazaa shaandaar niklega."
"Fateh ki fateh ka samay aa gaya hain."

Jacqueline Fernandez in the film was a hacker - or we should rather call her Dora the Explorer - who is trying to find something and always misses it until Fateh is free enough to save her from the wrath of the bad guys. Time and again, the VFX are shoved into your face to remind you that it is an A-rated film because of its violence. There comes a point when you want to question the makers: why is everybody killing everybody for, honestly, no reason at all?

The movie addresses quite a few important and harsh realities like online fraud, 'online killings', and deep fake videos, but in an attempt to cater to several battles, we often lose the war.

If Sandeep Reddy Vanga ever makes a non-misogynistic film on a low budget, it will look exactly like Sonu Sood's Fateh. In one scene, hundreds of masked men are running toward the hero, and no one is able to even touch him. At that exact point, you wish to stand up and sing Arjan Vailly at the top of your voice.

About CGI, VFX and Background score

Coming to the background music, CGI, and VFX of the film: it looked like the makers decided to give internships to newcomers, and they tried their best to make the CGI look better, but it didn't. Every second scene of the film has a singer singing a song with the word "Fateh" in it, and every time, the bass and the wavelength have been changed to make it look more effective.

The CGI of the movie is so bad that you can actually point out when they have used a hologram and how much colour was used to show blood. During one of the scenes, Naseeruddin Shah makes a deep fake video and changes his face with Sonu's, for which the police start chasing Sonu, and in the next scene, everyone has forgotten about it. One scene shows men with bulletproof jackets dying because of gunfire. How does this make sense?

Well, if you think Fateh is just a 2-hour story, then you are highly mistaken because it ends with a cliffhanger, hinting at a second part.

Final Verdict

Sometimes, it's good to break your real-life image of a messiah for films to show the audience the versatility you have in you; otherwise, the film comes across as pointless and boring as this one. Another more important point, is to decide the agenda before writing the script because when you decide to put everything on one plate, it often looks messy rather than tempting.