Fateh Review: In the race of violent ‘Animal(s)’ Sonu Sood starrer is pretending to be one

Fateh Movie Review: It is a movie that aspires to be an actioner like the ones Keanu Reeves gives us but suddenly lowers its ambition to become Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s immature draft.

Fateh Movie Review

Fateh Story - Fateh (Sonu Sood), an assassin, was long ago associated with an agency that would hire him to carry out killings and procure things from risky places in the world. But having left that life behind, he has now created a life in oblivion in a very small village in heartland Punjab. There he meets a girl who looks at him as her elder brother. One fine day she disappears, and Fateh needs to find her out. In the quest to bring her back, he busts an entire racket of cybercriminals and their fake loan scams that are plaguing the entire country. How many things will Fateh use to kill people is the rest of the story.

Fateh Review:

One of you Animal/Pushpa fans (get yourselves some therapy first) must dedicate your life to research on how the past five years have reshaped the violence in movies, and not for good mostly. Men with guns, a vehicular gun, a heavy voice, and completely no regard for the police or the system take over the world like it was always theirs to own, and the audience buying that ticket must probably be at their service. The Stockholm syndrome of sorts is so bad but luring that now films that probably would have taken a different route have started replicating them, becoming even a bigger problem than the originals are. Sonu Sood, who now makes his debut as a director, brings to us Fateh, who is introduced at least 20 times by multiple songs and one chorus that keeps playing every time the camera zooms into his face.

Written by Sonu Sood with Ankur Pajni, Fateh is a film derived out of the ambition to make something that resembles the likes of John Wick, where a retired assassin wants to put his gun down but the world doesn't let him, and fate brings him back into the game only to get more involved. But what Fateh instead becomes is a movie that is trying to crack every single possible formula around the genre in the same movie. You can literally see the writers trying to watch 10 movies in a day and trying to inculcate the best parts of those into their scripts. If one can see through that so clearly, it is given that the movie will take the most obvious, predictable, and not really exciting turns.

Also Read: Fateh release: Can Sonu Sood's action film do a Kill or Marco for Bollywood in January 2025?

There is a bit of John Wick, a lot of token patriotism, a whole lot of Animal, absolutely no regard towards the system, and then many things that are forgotten like they never happened. For instance, the movie begins with Fateh setting out to find Nimrat; he suddenly drifts towards wanting to now serve the country (you were an assassin, not a defence official, sir), to then forgetting Nimrat, only to recall her at a drastic juncture, and then going back to being the hero. Between this, the movie makes some of the silliest choices. The John Wick franchise became so big because the story stayed true to who the central hero was. No one gave him the responsibility to be an assassin but also a good person. No one had to defend his position by showing how he also sometimes helped the government save the country, you know.

Fateh does all of that and more but creates no impact. It is such a confusing mixture an d even more because of the nonlinear screenplay that just keeps jumping between time frames and cities. Fateh travels to some secret Gulf location via Dubai and comes back to India after plotting an entire plan in the same day, and the editing makes it look like he was hallucinating and it never happened. He does that with a boss called Ayappa Sir played by Prakash Belawadi, who should now put a signboard on his door saying, “Head back if you want me to play a secret agent/intelligence officer/the guy who has solutions.”

The action in Fateh is impressive, and Sonu Sood does take effort to make it pretty cutthroat (literally) and edgy. But what kills it is the CGI and VFX that are very basic, and you know the guy on screen covered in fake blood was never stabbed. Even the blood looks pink at some point. Some scenes are added for mere shock value; half of the violence doesn't make sense. There is an entire scene that looks like Sonu wanted to make his own Animal (2023) remake, and one must. Also, can we please get done with the ‘Mendak Bichoo’ story for once? Darlings, Kuttey, and now Fateh—it has lost its charm, at least for some time.

Also, what was the point of Jacqueline Fernandes in the film? And why are her survival instincts so low for someone who is going against the most brutal cyber criminals? The Cyber Criminals frame Fateh as the one who is the culprit behind the entire country losing their money. In the end everyone just forgets that like Doctor Strange put some spell and the world doesn't remember such a massive detail anymore. Who convinced Naseeruddin Shah to do this?

Fateh Verdict

Even when you can see a lot of effort being put into making it, Fateh has very little to offer for redemption in a runtime that is crisp but filled with a lot of things that aspire to be John Wick-styled drama but can only manage a weak replica of Animal, which is such a sad trajectory for any film.

Fateh releases on the big screen on January 10, 2025. Stay tuned to OTTplay for more information on this and everything else from the world of streaming and films.

Also read: Sonu Sood opens up about Fateh's box office clash with Ram Charan and Kiara Advani's Game Changer: 'May it be a...'

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