Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; November 8, 2017)

When you have former lovers Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif as leads, you might be tempted to focus on the romantic arc of the story. But director Ali Abbas Zafar was certain that Tiger Zinda Hai would be a strong narrative about undercover agents. Even though Khan and Kaif’s onscreen love story was the focal point in the 2012 prequel, Ek Tha Tiger, Zafar insists that he consciously steered clear of the subject to make a larger statement about the rise in terrorism around the world.

“Ek Tha Tiger was essentially a romantic story, where you saw Salman and Katrina’s characters as lovers. But in Tiger Zinda Hai, you will see them as agents. The scale and action sequences are more real and gritty. The film talks about many important issues that are affecting us. The romance is not the focus,” he says.

The real-life incident of 46 Indian nurses being taken hostage by the ISIS in Iraq in 2014 serves as the inspiration for Khan-Kaif’s Christmas offering. However, the director clarifies that while the 2014 rescue mission was his reference point, he has developed a fictional story around the event — one that his leads “reacted very strongly to.” “When Salman and Katrina heard the story about the rescue mission and what happened to the nurses in those 10 days, they were instantly sold on the idea.”

While the director had penned the script as a standalone film, he later realised that his story serves as the natural progression to Ek Tha Tiger. He reveals, “My story had two intelligence agents. Since there was already a movie where Salman and Katrina played agents, we decided to merge those characters with the new story.”