Attack: Part 1
- Director
- Lakshya Raj Anand
- Studio
- JA EntertainmentPen StudiosAK Productions
- Release Date
- 1 November 2022
- Running Time
- 123 min
- Language
- Hindi
- Country
- India
- Budget
- ₹80.00 Cr
- Box Office
- ₹22.70 Cr
Review
John Abraham throws himself into this role with genuine commitment, but "Attack: Part 1" squanders that effort with a muddled script that can't decide whether it's a revenge thriller, a sci-fi meditation on AI, or a geopolitical action flick. Aniruddh Roy Chowdhury's direction is competent enough during the action sequences—there's some inventive choreography and decent technical work—but the emotional beats fall flat. The tragedy that paralyzes Arjun arrives so abruptly and with so little character development that we barely care about his lost love. The film mistakes shock value for storytelling. What could've been a fascinating exploration of man versus machine becomes a generic revenge narrative with some fancy CGI slapped on top.
The cyborg transformation itself is handled decently from a visual standpoint, but the film completely botches the philosophical implications. Is Arjun a victim of the system? A weapon? A man reclaiming his humanity? The movie never commits to any answer. Jacqueline Fernandez is wasted in a thankless role, and the villain (Ratna Pathak Shah as the terrorist's mother) is laughably underdeveloped. The chemistry between leads feels forced, and worst of all, the pacing is atrocious—you can feel the film sagging under its own ambition, unable to balance spectacle with substance. The action is the only thing keeping this from complete disaster, but style without story is just empty calories.
Rating: 5/10
Storyline
So this army guy Arjun arrests a terrorist years ago, but it comes back to haunt him in the worst way possible. Fast forward and he's living a normal life, falls for this beautiful air hostess at the airport, and then tragedy strikes—a terror attack takes her away and leaves him completely paralyzed. It's absolutely brutal to watch, honestly. The whole thing feels personal now, not just a job anymore.
Instead of letting him fade away, the government sees an opportunity. There's this whole advanced AI supersoldier program that's been in development, and they think Arjun is the perfect candidate to be transformed into a cyborg warrior. He's reluctant at first, understandably so, but the chance to get revenge and take down the guy responsible—Hamid, the son of the terrorist from years ago—is too tempting to pass up. So he agrees to this insane procedure where they basically rebuild him with technology and implants.
What's interesting is that Arjun isn't just some mindless machine after the transformation. He's got this AI system controlling him, but it's complicated because his past trauma keeps affecting how he operates. Meanwhile, intelligence agencies are picking up that the main villain is trying to get his hands on chemical weapons from Eastern Europe, which escalates everything. The whole thing is set up as this massive clash between man and machine, old methods versus new warfare—pretty epic stuff, and the action sequences really deliver on that promise.