Written by: Muhammad Suhayb
Posted on: December 12, 2022 | 
| 中文
Shaan Shahid and Kiran Malik in Zarrar
The screen opens with the newsreel of Pakistan President Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s visit to the USA in 1961. Seen here in an open car with President John F Kennedy, Pakistan was hailed as a great friend of America, until the visuals are cut to the attack on the World Trade Centre forty years later. After that Pakistan fell from grace of the Western world, especially the USA, because it was viewed as harboring and promoting terrorism. The movie then shows the withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan, when India’s hopes of acquiring influence in that country are dashed. This was just the beginning of actor/director Shaan Shahid’s ‘Zarrar’, where the Lollywood veteran tries to correct the wrong doings in his style.
A fight scene in Zarrar
When Shaan’s previous film Arth (2017) bombed at the box-office, the superstar had no option but to make an action flick regarding global politics. It may have been a favorite topic for Shaan’s father, the legendary filmmaker Riaz Shahid, who was a journalist before becoming a filmmaker, but it is not Shaan’s cup of tea. Riaz Shahid created a wandering character named ‘Lawrence’ in Shaheed (January 1962), who wanted to divide Pakistan. This happened well before Peter O’ Toole appeared as T.E. Lawrence in the ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (December 1962). Riaz Shahid also highlighted the Palestinian movement with his diamond jubilee film Zarqa (1969). Shaan chose a topic concerning the world we live in, where Pakistan is under siege by enemies both from within and without.
Shafqat Cheema, a RAW agent disguised as a Moulvi in Zarrar
Shaan plays the title role of Zarrar, who works for an organization of the same name (no idea why). He happened to be a soldier but somehow turned rogue and can kill anyone who comes in his way and his country. Legendary actor Nadeem as retired Colonel Mustajab, who helps Shaan’s character at each step. It reminds one of Richard Crenna’s character of Colonel Samuel Trautman from the Rambo movies. The colonel is a father figure to Sylvester Stallone’s John Rambo, and knows exactly what he is capable of doing. Model-turned-actor Kiran Malik plays the love interest of Zarrar, and starts off as a corrupt news anchor. She is doing paid shows on her television channel without any regard for her father’s reputation, who was an honest journalist and a writer. Zarrar's influence on her makes her somewhat less amoral for she begins to have a love interest in the hero. The movie was supposed to be her debut, but the release of the family drama ‘Pinky Memsaab' a few years earlier made her famous.
Nayyar Ejaz as Salman Shah, a corrupt politician and Kiran Malik as a journalist
The film has a variety of villains; the media, the clerics, the agencies, the politicians and the ‘Bairooni Saazish’ (foreign conspiracies). In the long list of bad guys, the regular villains of Lollywood, Nayyar Ejaz and Shafqat Cheema, also feature. The terrifying duo was last seen together in Maula Jutt earlier this year, and they play similar characters here. Nayyar Ejaz is shown as a corrupt politician Salman Shah, working to destabilize Pakistan, while Shafqat Cheema as Ravinder Kaushik, who is a RAW agent disguised as a Moulvi (religious cleric). Producer Adnan Butt is cast as the deadly Mahavir Singh Rajpoot from RAW, while the late Rasheed Naz, who died earlier this year, was Fahimullah Khan, the ‘Bad Guy from Afghanistan’. There are few ‘goray’ (Englishmen) in the film who, along with their entire teams, were destroyed by the ‘Man from Pakistan’, Zarrar.
A globetrotting spy-thriller, the movie was shot by Timothy Fathom Wood in Pakistan, Turkey and the United Kingdom way back in 2016. The background music has been done by Thomas Farnon. The songs were good, especially the one with the vocals of Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. Similarly, the Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) used to show the multi-touch interfaces were good for Pakistani audience, along with the well-choreographed action scenes and patriotic dose of dialogues.
Shan and Kiran in Zarrar
In an age when movies mostly define the narrative of a nation, ‘Zarrar’ highlights the importance of hybrid warfare, identifies the conspiracies to weaken Pakistan and unravels the threat attached to the country’s nuclear arsenal. Zarrar was on its way to emulate a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster, but the pandemic did it in. The final product has several scenes which drag. Zarrar falls short of making it big like Bilal Lashari’s Waar, due to some production errors: badly synced scenes, over usage of dialogues in English, frequent fade to black and excessive use of fake blood, kept the audience away from the cinematic experience they paid at least 1000 rupees for.
Shaan with the crew on sets of Zarrar
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