India, Jan. 23 -- IN THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS, the roster of Hindi cinema has been clogged with certain kinds of narratives and mostly with one kind of event: war. There has been a proliferation of war films as their rhetoric - identifying the nemesis as an "enemy", using dialogues filled with allegories of battles - leaks into the grammar of regular dramas. It was about time that JP Dutta's Border (1997), the original war-cry of a film centred firmly around Indian soldiers, would be reprised, and Border 2 is that.

There, however, are some differences. Border 2 is directed by Anurag Singh (he also made Kesari in 2019). Both are based on the 1971 India-Pakistan war, but if the first focused on the Battle of Longewala, where a small group ...