Attack

There is a specific brand of stubbornness required to release a high-concept sci-fi experiment like Attack in the same window that the juggernaut RRR was busy rewriting the laws of global gravity. While the rest of India was swooning over tiger-wrestling revolutionaries, John Abraham was quietly trying to introduce the subcontinent to its first genuine cybernetic super-soldier. I watched this while trying to untangle a pair of wired headphones I haven't used in three years, and honestly, the struggle with those stubborn knots mirrored the protagonist’s digital reawakening quite nicely. It’s a film that feels like it’s constantly fighting its own programming—part gritty counter-terrorism thriller, part ambitious RoboCop homage, and part "John Abraham Flexing" simulator.

Booting Up the Desi RoboCop

The setup is peak contemporary action: Arjun Shergill (John Abraham) is a top-tier operative who ends up paralyzed from the neck down after a brutal airport shootout. In an era where we’re obsessed with the ethics of AI and neural links, the film skips the philosophy and goes straight for the "plug a chip into his spine" solution. Enter IRA (Serena Walia), an artificial intelligence that lives in his head and helps him walk, talk, and, more importantly, punch through brick walls.

What I appreciated here was the lack of hesitation. Director Lakshya Raj Anand (who previously cut his teeth as an assistant on Ek Tha Tiger) knows we’ve seen Upgrade and Universal Soldier. He doesn't waste time explaining the science; he just wants to show us what happens when a human tank gets a software update. John Abraham plays the role with his usual stoic intensity. It’s a performance that works because he looks like he was sculpted out of granite, and his acting range often feels like it was calibrated by a guy who thinks a thermostat is too expressive. For a man playing a cyborg, that’s not a bug—it’s a feature.

The First-Person Shooter Experiment

Where Attack actually earns its seat at the table is in its visual language. There is a prolonged sequence during the Parliament siege that shifts into a literal First-Person Shooter (FPS) perspective. For anyone who grew up on Call of Duty or Doom, it’s a total trip. The camera mimics the HUD of a video game, complete with target locks and health bars. It’s a risky move that could have looked cheap, but the cinematography by P. S. Vinod keeps it slick.

The action choreography isn't just mindless flailing; it has a rhythm. You can see the effort put into the stunt work, even when the CGI occasionally feels like it’s straining against its $9.6 million budget. In a post-pandemic landscape where streaming has made us all a bit cynical about "big" action, Attack tries to give you a reason to keep your eyes on the screen. The terrorists in this movie have the collective tactical awareness of a group of toddlers playing hide-and-seek in a glass house, but seeing Arjun dismantle them with algorithmic precision is undeniably satisfying.

Lost in the Shadow of Giants

It’s a bit tragic how quickly this film vanished. Released in April 2022, it was essentially a sacrifice at the altar of the "Pan-India" masala wave. While audiences were craving the maximalism of K.G.F: Chapter 2, Attack was offering something leaner, colder, and more Western-coded. It represents that weird, transitional phase of contemporary Bollywood where producers are desperately trying to figure out if they can make a "genre" film without the mandatory five song-and-dance numbers. (Thankfully, the songs here are mostly relegated to the background or brief montages).

The supporting cast does what they can with the "Information-Dump" dialogue. Rakul Preet Singh plays the brilliant scientist Dr. Sabah Qureshi, though her main job is looking concerned at monitors. Prakash Raj pops up as the hard-nosed veteran Vadraj Kumar Subramaniam, bringing his usual gravitas to scenes that would otherwise feel like a tech demo. Even the legendary Ratna Pathak Shah is here as Arjun’s mother, providing the only real emotional tether in a movie otherwise made of wires and gunpowder.

Despite the production values being quite high for the price tag, you can see where the "franchise planning" got ahead of itself. It was marketed as "Part 1," but given that it only clawed back about a quarter of its budget at the box office, a "Part 2" seems about as likely as me actually finishing that 5,000-piece puzzle sitting in my closet. It’s a classic "Hidden Gem" candidate—a film that took a big swing at sci-fi in a market that wasn't quite ready to trade its heroes' hearts for microchips.

If you’re looking for a deep dive into the human condition, you’re in the wrong theater. But if you want a slick, 123-minute adrenaline shot that feels like a cross between a graphic novel and a PlayStation 5 exclusive, Attack delivers. It’s a fascinating look at what happens when Indian cinema tries to pivot away from tradition and toward a more global, tech-heavy aesthetic. It’s flawed, it’s occasionally silly, but it’s never boring—and in the current era of bloated three-hour epics, that’s a feature I’ll take every single time.