YRF Spy Universe

Here are the six films so far part of the YRF Spy Universe:

Ek Tha Tiger (2012, Kabir Khan)

Tiger Zinda Hai (2017, Ali Abbas Zafar)

War (2019, Siddharth Anand)

Pathaan (2023, Siddharth Anand)

Tiger 3 (2023, Maneesh Sharma)

War 2 (2025, Ayan Mukerji)

Blame it on the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). Once MCU showed everyone the financial benefits of having a multi-film, multi-year plan, others naturally followed with their own cinematic universe tie-ins. The thinking was multiple films with crossover characters/storylines, bigger stars, bigger budgets would lead to larger revenues. Ultimately, revenue is the long-term goal of these cinematic universes, which ensure a longer duration for characters thereby building or maintaining fanbase loyalty in turn leading to long-term financial growth. Of course, not all these cinematic universes have faired as well as Marvel. DCU (DC Universe) hasn’t worked out and is now in the process of a reboot. Indian Cinema alone has multiple such cinematic universes on the go, with Rohit Shetty Cop Universe, Lokesh Cinematic Universe, Maddock Horror Comedy Universe, Astraverse (unsure of its future status) and YRF Spy Universe.

YRF Spy Universe, like majority of the Indian Cinematic Universes, was conceived only after the first initial films were released. YRF Spy Universe only started with the 4^th of the 6 films thus far. The first three films, Ek Tha Tiger, Tiger Zinda Hai, War, were standalone films. The idea to create this YRF Spy Universe was likely conceived after the huge success of War. Pathaan then was the first out of these 6 films to reap the benefits of the Cinematic Universe framework.

Action, Dance and Romance

All the six films involve Indian agents part of the RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) agency trying to save the nation and/or its citizens from both internal-external threats, which not surprisingly involves Pakistani ISI agents. The main RAW agents are: Tiger (Salman Khan, all 3 Tiger films), Kabir (Hrithik Roshan, War, War 2), Khalid (Tiger Shroff, War), Pathaan (Shah Rukh Khan), Vikram (N.T. Rama Rao Jr. , War 2), Kavya (Kiara Advani, War 2). The main ISI female agents are Zoya (Katrina Kaif, Tiger films), Rubai (Deepika Padukone, Pathaan).

The films are set in global locations. Even though India is under threat, the Indian agents hop across countries faster than it would take to be beamed via Star Trek’s teleportation device.  Tiger Zinda Hai is one exception in that the film is set exclusively outside of India (in Iraq) and involves Tiger saving Indian nurses from a terrorist organization (plot based on a real-life 2014 incident).

In order to ensure the films have a global appeal and don’t alienate Muslim viewers, ISI isn’t the main villain anymore but has provided a bit of romance in the form of double agents. A hilarious line from Pathaan has a character musing if ISI is running a dating service with Tiger, Pathaan falling for ISI agents Zoya, Rubai respectively. With ISI no longer the main villain, the last few films have featured rogue ex-RAW agents or mercenaries for hire working for a global crime syndicate as the main foes. The stakes for saving the nation have grown with each film with the nation on the verge of destruction with each passing minute. However, it doesn’t matter how dire the situation is, all the agents find time to dance for a few songs, show off their six-pack abs and even have a romantic fling with female agents that look like swimsuit models (casting criteria for female actors clearly requires looking good in a bikini).

Ranking the films in order of preference:

It feels unfair to rank or even rate these films. That is because half the films can be disregarded as having any cinematic merit because the three Tiger films feature Salman Khan who cannot act, despite being one of the largest box-office stars in the country.

1. War (2019)

Easily the best film in the franchise. The action scenes are nicely done with good acting, direction and story.

2. Pathaan (2023)

The film marked the long return of Shah Rukh Khan and was a huge box-office success. SRK is good in his role but the film is bloated with needless plot twists and action sequences. The film was also the first in the franchise to feature a crossover character from the YRF Spy Universe (Tiger making an appearance).

3. Tiger 3 (2023)

The only real merit in the film is the appearance of Pathaan.

4. War 2 (2025)

This awful film undoes any of the good work of the first War film. The first segment of the film feels like the director trying to channel John Wick with a splash of Tarantino but that isn’t anything compared to the absurd middle segment which rehashes the worst aspect of 1980s Hindi cinema plot (long lost childhood friends). That awful middle segment introduces melodrama which isn’t as commonplace in Bollywood as it once used to be and destroys any narrative momentum before a final third which feels like it will never end as the characters keep fighting and fighting.

5. Tiger Zinda Hai (2017)

This is mostly watchable in scenes when the camera doesn’t feature Tiger (Salman Khan) but instead focus on Zoya (Katrina Kaif).

6. Ek Tha Tiger (2012)

Unwatchable. The movie features the worst masala aspects of Indian cinema, where comedy, action, drama and songs are all mixed and thereby weaken the overall content.

Next Steps

The run rate of this YRF Spy Universe isn’t that great. I would only qualify one of these six films as good (War), with another one as decent (Pathaan) and 0 points for the others (in fairness, I should have negative points for the others). That leaves 1.5/6 which is 25%. Of course, my personal rating has no bearing on anything and the financial returns of the films ensure this franchise will continue.

The 7^th film in this franchise arrives on Dec 25, 2025 with Alpha and the post-credits of War 2 depicted the main antagonist (Bobby Doel, who seems to be every where now, be it Cinema or Streaming TV). Pathaan 2 is in the works and a future Tiger-Pathaan film as well. 

Top Indian Films of All Time

A ‘Top/Best Indian Films of all time” list is a very tough order for me due to the sheer quantity of quality titles to choose from. This is because the selection of titles consist of a diverse set of criteria, ranging from multiple languages (such as Bengali, Hindi, Tamil to name a few) to production types (Bollywood, Parallel Cinema) to various regional industries. It is extremely hard to leave out many worthy films from directors I cherish.

Top 20 Indian titles ranked roughly in order of preference:

1. Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959, Satyajit Ray)
2. Uski Roti (Our Daily Bread, 1970, Mani Kaul)
3. Amma Ariyan (Report to Mother, 1986, John Abraham)
4. Pather Panchali (1955, Satyajit Ray)
5. Pyaasa (1957, Guru Dutt)
6. Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star, 1960, Ritwik Ghatak)
7. Sholay (1975, Ramesh Sippy)
8. Ankur (1974, Shyam Benegal)
9. Mahanagar (The Big City, 1963, Satyajit Ray)
10. Om Dar-B-Dar (1988, Kamal Swaroop)
11. Black Friday (2004, Anurag Kashyap)
12. Ek Din Pratidin (And Quiet Rolls the Dawn, 1979, Mrinal Sen)
13. Awaara (The Vagabond, 1951, Raj Kapoor)
14. Titas Ekti Nodir Naam (A River Called Titas, 1973, Ritwik Ghatak)
15. Kaagaz ke Phool (Paper Flowers, 1959, Guru Dutt)
16. Garm Hava (Hot Winds, 1974, M.S. Sathyu)
17. Ek Ghar (Mane, 1991, Girish Kasaravalli)
18. Dharavi (1992, Sudhir Mishra)
19. Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (2002, Aparna Sen)
20. Party (1984, Govind Nihalani)

It wasn't my intention to split the titles across the decades but this is what the top 20 looks as per the decades:

1950s: 5
1960s: 2
1970s: 6
1980s: 3
1990s: 2
2000s: 2

Seeing the most number of titles from the 1970s isn't a surprise as that decade marked the growth of Parallel Cinema in Hindi language films and ushered in many auteurs such as Mani Kaul. In addition, the 1970s marked the fictional film debut of Shyam Benegal.

10 Honourable mentions (in alphabetical order):

Many of these films were comfortably placed in the top 20 but after multiple iterations of making the list, they ended up getting knocked out.

Anand (1971, Hrishikesh Mukherjee)
Aparajito (1956, Satyajit Ray)
Charulata (1964, Satyajit Ray)
Chauthi Koot (The Fourth Direction, 2015, Gurvinder Singh)
Chhoti Se Baat (1976, Basu Chatterjee)
Elippathayam (Rat-Trap, 1982, Adoor Gopalakrishnan)
The Great Indian Kitchen (2021, Jeo Baby)
Maachis (Matchsticks, 1996, Gulzar)
Nayakan (1987, Mani Ratnam)
A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021, Payal Kapadia)

Update to Decades list after top 30:
1950s: 6
1960s: 3
1970s: 8
1980s: 5
1990s: 3
2000s: 2
2010s: 1
2020s: 2

Gurvinder Singh's Alms for a Blind Horse

Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan / Alms for a Blind Horse (2011, India, Gurvinder Singh)

Gurvinder Singh’s brilliant debut film depicts the hardships that Indian farmers/workers face in their daily lives as they battle greedy landowners while living alongside pollution generating coal stacks. The film’s realistic portrayal of life in Punjab is rarely seen in cinema, as is the film's style. The film came out in 2011 but its style is not like other contemporary Indian movies. Instead, the film’s mise-en-scène is more akin to that of the Parallel Indian Cinema of the 1970s and 80s especially that of the great Mani Kaul. That is not a coincidence because the late Mani Kaul served as a creative producer on Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan.

Nods to Mani Kaul’s cinema are apparent early on from the daily morning rituals of the farmers to even how interactions are portrayed in the film. The camera only shows what needs to be shown and no dialogues are wasted.

In one quiet beautiful sequence, the local farmers visit the village leader to complain about their land troubles. A few words are exchanged. The village leader gets up, quietly walks over and brings his gun with him. That gun, which doesn’t need to be used, is a reminder to the villagers who is the boss.

 

Gurvinder Singh has smartly stitched in plenty of references to social, economic, health and political problems plaguing locals within the film’s framework. For example, problems about alcohol addiction (prevalent in Punjab) are part of a discussion among some locals while union protests are in the backdrop as characters are trying to cross the street.

 

 

In other films set in Punjab, one only sees lush green fields. Yet, that is not the case here. Singh and Satya Nagpaul’s camera capture elements that are absent from other Indian cinema. For example, I can’t recall seeing coal stacks in any other recent Indian film. Yet, the omnipresent coal stacks which are quietly polluting the skies and leading to health problems are a major source of power in India. Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan corrects that omission and one can see coal stacks in many scenes.

Mani Kaul sadly passed away on July 6, 2011, a few months before Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan debuted at the Venice Film Festival. In that sense, Gurvinder Singh’s cinematic gift carries the torch passed on from Mani Kaul.

On another note, Singh’s follow-up film Chauthi Koot debuted at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard in 2015 and is a riveting piece of cinema.

In Memory of Basu Chatterjee

The news of Basu Chatterjee’s sudden death on June 4 was a shock. When I was growing up, I didn't know what an auteur was but I could identify a Basu Chatterjee film in few minutes: lovely touching stories about ordinary people packed with astute observations about human behaviour. I wasn't aware then but he was the first auteur I came across.

Basu Chatterjee’s light-hearted films contrasted the angry man films of Amitabh Bachchan and other action-packed Bollywood films while also standing apart from the artistic works of Parallel Cinema. As Namrata Joshi points out:

“Kaul, Kumar Shahani and Basu Bhattacharya (whom Chatterjee assisted in Teesri Kasam in 1966) continued to remain Chatterjee’s creative comrades and friends, though he himself opted to embrace what has since been called the middle-of-the road cinema. He, along with Hrishikesh Mukherjee, became the torchbearer of light-hearted, entertaining, middle class family dramas that offered a parallel narrative to the mainstream Angry Young Man movies on the one hand and the radical, path-breaking, artistic and experimental concerns of the New Wave.”

Chatterjee didn’t just make warm touching movies. He also directed Ek Ruka Hua Faisla (1986), a powerful hard-hitting Indian adaptation of 12 Angry Men, and also Kamla ki Maut (1989), a film ahead of its time in dealing with issues of pre-marital sex rarely seen on Indian screens in the 1980s.

Note: Kamla ki Maut has a stellar cast with Pankaj Kapur, Supriya Pathak, Rupa Ganguly and was also one of the earlier films that Irrfan Khan acted in.

I have fond memories of seeing almost all of Basu Chatterjee’s movies but here are just a few of my favourite Basu Chatterjee movies (in no particular order):

Chhoti Se Baat (A Small Matter, 1976)
Kirayadar (Renter, 1979)
Ek Ruka Hua Faisla (A Pending Decision, 1986)
Pasand Apni Apni (1983)
Kamla Ki Maut (Kamla’s Death, 1989)
Lakhon Ki Baat (Talk of Millions, 1984)
Khatta Meetha (Sweet and Sour, 1978)
Shaukeen (1982)
Chameli Ki Shaadi (Chameli’s Wedding, 1986)
Do Ladke Dono Kadke (1979)

Sukanya Verma on his movies: “Basu Chatterjee didn't just make movies for us. He made movies about us.”

Sidharth Bhatia: "Basu Chatterjee Created the Perfect Alternative to Violent Hindi Movies of the 1970s"

Ragini Daliya: “However, while the men of his films were living the real world, making all ups and downs look interesting, the women too had agency. They were opinionated, romantically liberated, dreamers, worriers and empowered – all brought to vivid, wondrous life by Chatterjee.”