Border 2 Review: I walked into Border 2 already cautious. The trailers were loud, the marketing was aggressive, and the early reactions felt… rehearsed. Still, I hoped the film would at least respect the basics of warfare, history, and soldiering.
It doesn’t. Instead, what we get is a film that treats Indian soldiers like clueless extras waiting for background music cues, while the enemy army is magically omnipresent, hyper-prepared, and conveniently smarter at every turn. That imbalance isn’t just bad writing. It’s insulting.
My Rating: 1.5/5
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Movie Name | Border 2 |
| Genre | War, Action, Drama |
| Language | Hindi |
| Country | India |
| Director | Anurag Singh |
| Producer | JP Dutta, Bhushan Kumar |
| Franchise | Sequel to Border (1997) |
The Biggest Problem: Competence Is Missing
This film consistently shows:
- Indian soldiers with no situational awareness
- No command-and-control structure
- No intelligence network
- No coordination between the Army, Air Force, and Navy
- No understanding of basic battlefield logic
Soldiers walk into their own landmine fields. No helmets. No body armor. No standard operating behavior. Characters survive explosions, tanks, artillery, and RPGs without a scratch, while logic dies a slow, painful death.
At one point, a character steps on a landmine placed by his own unit and survives through pure cinematic nonsense. Not a strategy. Not training. Just… hero physics. This isn’t cinematic liberty. This is writing that doesn’t understand what a battlefield even is.
History Is Treated Like a Footnote
The 1971 war is not some vague emotional backdrop. It’s one of India’s most decisive military victories.
93,000 Pakistani soldiers surrendered. Bangladesh was liberated. It’s documented history. But Border 2 presents a version of reality where:
- Pakistan has unlimited tanks on every front
- Indian forces are barely holding on
- Every attack catches India by surprise
That’s not creative interpretation. That’s distortion. And if you’re going to use a real war, real uniforms, and real sacrifices, then accuracy isn’t optional.
War Without Technique Is Just Noise
A good war film lives or dies by technique. Tactics. Weapons. Geography. Movement. Border (1997) understood this. You felt the dust, the exhaustion, the fear. Soldiers reloaded carefully. Weapons behaved like weapons. Explosions had weight. In Border 2:
- Guns are mostly CGI
- Weapons are historically wrong
- Tanks behave like toys
- Explosions feel weightless
- Reloading is apparently optional
There’s a scene where a grenade is tossed into a tank barrel at an angle that should have killed the hero instantly. Instead, it plays out like a cartoon. At no point did I feel tension. I just kept noticing mistakes.
Religion Used as a Shortcut, Not Emotion
Let me be blunt here, because this matters. Border 2 doesn’t use faith as a reflection of soldiers’ inner strength. It uses it as a plot device to cover incompetence.
A sonar fails. Engineers can’t fix it. A picture of Goddess Durga is pasted on the machine. Next shot, problem solved. That’s not faith. That’s lazy writing. In Border, religion and emotion were woven into the human experience of war. Here, it’s a crutch, used to avoid writing solutions that require effort or research.
Performances: One Actor Carrying Too Much Weight
Sunny Deol is doing what Sunny Deol does. Presence. Authority. Volume. But the film treats him like an invincible action figure. No injury. No fatigue. No consequences. Five hours of war, and he walks out with a clean uniform and a clean face.
That removes all stakes. Varun Dhawan is completely miscast. His accent shifts, his emotional beats don’t land, and his physicality doesn’t convince. There are moments meant to feel intense that instead feel unintentionally funny.
Diljit Dosanjh has screen presence, but his Air Force sequences ignore basic aviation logic. Planes take off during active bombing. Anti-aircraft defenses don’t exist. Oxygen masks are removed mid-flight like it’s no big deal. Monica Singh is the only actor who feels grounded, because she’s reacting like a human being, not a symbol.
Editing, CGI, and Production: Nothing Holds Together
This film doesn’t feel finished. Continuity errors are everywhere. Boots change between shots. Body doubles are obvious. CGI tanks don’t sit on the ground properly. Lighting doesn’t match explosions. Naval ships change size depending on the angle.
You don’t need a film degree to notice this. You just need eyes. And when a film’s entire defense becomes “it’s an emotion, not a movie,” that’s usually because the Border 2 movie itself can’t stand scrutiny.
The Forced Nostalgia Problem
The climax tries to emotionally manipulate the audience by inserting callbacks to Border (1997), faces, characters, and echoes. But it makes no narrative sense. These characters don’t share that battlefield history. The visions feel artificial, like a checklist item designed to trigger applause.
Nostalgia only works when it’s earned. This wasn’t.
Also Read: Anaganaga Oka Raju Review: A Comedy That Lives and Breathes Through Naveen Polishetty
The Bigger Issue: Selling Patriotism
What bothered me most wasn’t just the bad filmmaking. It’s how aggressively this film is being sold as a patriotic duty, while quietly disrespecting the very forces it claims to honor.
Paid reviews. Identical praise scripts. Social media pressure to “not question emotions.” But questioning is respect. Blind praise isn’t.
The Good vs Bad In Border 2
| Aspect | What Works | What Completely Fails |
|---|---|---|
| Intent | Tries to evoke patriotism | Uses it to hide poor writing |
| Sunny Deol | Commanding presence | Unreal, consequence-free hero |
| Monica Singh | Genuine emotional weight | Underwritten role |
| Action Scale | Large setups | No logic, no realism |
| War Accuracy | — | Historically and technically wrong |
| CGI & VFX | Occasional ambition | Rushed, unfinished, distracting |
| Emotional Core | Conceptually strong | Executed without sincerity |
| Respect for Forces | Claims to honor | Portrays incompetence |
Final Verdict On Border 2: This Isn’t a War Film, It’s a Mess
Border 2 is not bold. It’s not brave. And it’s definitely not respectful. It’s a film that replaces research with shouting, replaces realism with symbolism, and replaces storytelling with marketing.
If you care about Indian war films, this one hurts. If you care about honest cinema, it frustrates. And if you care about how our soldiers are portrayed, it should worry you.
Rating: 1.5 / 5 Not because it lacks emotion. But it lacks honesty. And that matters more.
