Shoorveer (Disney+Hotstar): Uri jingoism in Top Gun bottle

One must give it to Bollywood in the way it tirelessly keeps giving fresh tempering to the much-commanded patriotic blueprint of content creation these days. Never mind if even this new tadka is full of age old, familiar ingredients. And so, we have Shoorveer that blatantly channels Top Gun to platform a cool, spiffy, swag-filled nationalism, complete with sunglasses, bikes, and buff bodies.

You have a maverick fighter pilot, one amongst the handpicked getting trained for a mission—the Hawks elite special task force being groomed as a first responder team against terrorist attacks. Sounds familiar? Most members are dealing with ghosts of the past, deaths and betrayals and must give in to inventive ways of building the elusive team spirit. Not just that, Shoorveer even manages to reference the conversations in Top Gun about how it is the pilot who matters, not as much the plane. It’s all about much the same elements and template with thrilling air stunts to boot. And a likeable set of troopers, specially Regina Cassandra as the MIG pilot Avantika Rao.

But, beyond this Hollywood déjà vu, what else? Well, there’s even more déjà vu, in the patently Indian mode. Much like Hollywood’s once upon a time phobia for the Russians, we are stuck in Bollywood with our anxiety for our perennial enemy Pakistan and the bad Muslim. Shoorveer springs from the same animus, rehashes the age-old saga of threats to security systems from across the border, infiltration of spies to live within India as Indians and a nerdy looking unhinged terrorist to boot. There’s further complication of sale of malfunctioning planes to the country by Sweden. All along there’s a dynamic PM along with his security advisor watching live telecast of India’s surgical strikes, ie a covert operative across the border. All this is when he is not busy harping on the previous regime compromising on nation’s security, talking of New India and giving a call for Make In India, to manufacture own planes once the Swedish deal stinks. Uri like jingoism in a Top Gun bottle should we say?