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Action movie Waar has ‘a dangerous narrative’
Waar seems ordinary enough as an action Kazmi, 24. “The act of terrorism that we are
movie — Pakistani forces fighting terror- facing is basically not done by the Pakistanis.
ism, a James Bond-like character hunting An external factor is involved.”
an assassin, a woman seducing a patriot.
But the Pakistani-made film playing to packed
houses these days has some critics worried,
because it suggests that the country‟s terrorism problem is not home-grown, but a sinister
plot by outside enemies, particularly long-term
adversary India.
The film opened four weeks ago and for a
time was playing on all screens at many multiplexes. It will likely be the year‟s top grosser.
Its action sequences and cinematography
stand out and should give a boost to the
country‟s struggling cinema industry.
Waar seems to have hit a chord with a public
that widely believes Pakistan is viewed from
abroad as a perpetuator of terrorism, rather
than a victim measured in the tens of thousands of people killed in bombings and shootings over the past decade.
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But it is a narrative that worries those who
wonder how Pakistan can ever defeat militants in its own country if it cannot agree
about who is to blame. Pakistanis have a history of perpetuating conspiracy theories that
blame problems on “outside forces”. Many
believe, for instance, that the Pakistani Taliban leader killed in a drone strike on November 1 was actually a pawn of the US and In- “It‟s just a film, the same way that Hollywood
has portrayed the good guys and the bad
dia.
guys. It‟s not a documentary,” said Bilal
Lashari, 31. “I don‟t understand why some
The movie is “trying to divert attention away
people are giving it credit for trying to explain
from the actual source of the problems. And
the realities of what‟s going on.”
that‟s why I think it‟s a dangerous narrative,”
said Hasan Zaidi, a Pakistani director who
Most Indians have not seen the film, which
runs the Karachi International Film Festival.
has not been released in the country, and the
Film Certification Board said it had not been
The columnist and cultural critic Nadeem
asked to review it.
Paracha said the idea that India is to blame
for Pakistan‟s problems has long been prevalent in Pakistani society, which tends to view But Waar already has one prominent fan —
itself as a bastion of Islam surrounded by ene- the Bollywood filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma,
who said on Twitter that he watched a pirated
mies.
copy. He later tweeted that in a long telephone chat with Lashari he was “impressed
Paracha said the idea is especially popular
with his humbleness as much as I was with
with the young, urban middle class.
his film Waar”.
The movie opens with a man illegally entering
Pakistan and teaming up with an assassin.
Both supposedly are working for India and are
being hunted by security agents led by an
army major whose family was killed by the
“The