In her effort to accomplish everything that a male star does, Kangana Ranaut is losing the plot. After Dhaakad, she is once again the driving force of a vehicle that refuses to take off. Low on logic and high on ham, debutant Sarvesh Mewara’s Tejas is a lacklustre effort to promote nationalist feelings and trust in women officers in combat operations that feels more like a shoddily put-together advertisement of new India than a piece of inspirational cinema. Coming from the producers of Uri: The Surgical Strike, it is a sloppy follow-up that neither works as an action film nor manages to sustain the emotional swell.
In this version, the insubordination of Wing Commander Tejas Gill (Kangana Ranaut), named after the light combat aircraft, in a rescue mission is entrusted with a more dangerous assignment to free an Indian spy from the clutches of some fanatic Islamists. Such films require a bunch of strong antagonists, but such is the makers’ devotion to the lead actor that Mewara has crafted a series of cardboards in Pakistan and Afghanistan that almost give a walkover to Kangana without even putting up a semblance of a fight. The only update is that the target this time is the upcoming Ram Temple in Ayodhya. Part of the footage might work as WhatsApp forwards in days of political fever, but for now, they don’t add up as an engaging film.
