Wazir

Story:

Wazir is a 2016 Indian Hindi-language neo-noir action thriller film directed by Bejoy Nambiar and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. Written and edited by Abhijat Joshi and Chopra, the film stars Amitabh Bachchan and Farhan Akhtar alongside Aditi Rao Hydari, Manav Kaul and Neil Nitin Mukesh. John Abraham makes a special appearance. The film’s dialogue and additional dialogue were written by Abhijeet Deshpande and Gazal Dhaliwal, respectively. The music was composed by several artists including Shantanu Moitra, Ankit Tiwari, Advaita, Prashant Pillai, Rochak Kohli and Gaurav Godkhindi, with the background score composed by Rohit Kulkarni. Sanu Varghese served as the film’s cinematographer.

PLOT

Anti-Terrorism Squad officer Danish Ali (Farhan Akhtar) lives with his wife Ruhana (Aditi Rao Hydari) and little daughter Noorie. One day, while Danish is driving with his wife and daughter, he spots the terrorist Farooq Rameez and chases him. Noorie is killed in the ensuing shootout while Rameez escapes. Ruhana is shattered and blames Danish for Noorie’s death. Danish later kills Rameez during a police operation, angering his seniors, who wanted Rameez alive to find out which politician he was going to meet. Subsequently, Danish is suspended from the ATS.

A grief-stricken Danish is about to kill himself at Noorie’s grave when a mysterious van appears, which drives off when Danish yells at it. Danish finds a wallet lying where the van was, goes to return it, and meets its owner, a handicapped chess master named Pandit Omkar Nath Dhar (Amitabh Bachchan), who turns out to have been Noorie’s chess teacher. Pandit starts teaching Danish chess and tells him about Nina, Pandit’s daughter who also died. Nina (Vaidehi Parashurami) had been teaching chess to Ruhi (Mazel Vyas), the daughter of a government minister, Yazaad Qureshi (Manav Kaul), and had fallen down the stairs at Qureshi’s house and died. Pandit is convinced that her death was not an accident. Puzzled and intrigued, Danish tries to meet Qureshi, but cops at the minister’s office threaten him with arrest. Danish later meets Ruhi at her school to ask her about Nina, but Ruhi is taken away by Qureshi who threatens her for talking to Danish. That night Pandit is brutally attacked by Wazir (Neil Nitin Mukesh), a hitman sent by Qureshi, who warns Pandit and Danish to stop chasing Qureshi.

Pandit leaves for Kashmir, where Qureshi is headed. Wazir calls Danish and threatens to kill Pandit right there. Danish frantically chases Pandit’s van, but Wazir blows it up, killing Pandit. Determined to exact revenge and discover who Wazir is, Danish leaves for Kashmir without informing Ruhana and makes a plan with the Superintendent of Police Vijay Malik (John Abraham) to pull Wazir out. During Qureshi’s speech, Malik detonates explosives hidden in a chandelier above the podium, causing a panic, and holds back the police to give Danish time to act. Qureshi escapes in the confusion and goes to where he and Ruhi are staying, but Danish breaks in and asks him about Wazir. Qureshi claims he does not know anybody called Wazir, when a crying Ruhi reveals to Danish that Qureshi is not her father – he is actually one of the militants who massacred her entire village and posed as her father when Indian Army troops arrived. Ruhi had told Nina this, so Qureshi killed Nina and staged it as an accident. Danish realises that Rameez and the other terrorists had come to meet Qureshi, and kills him. Subsequently, the ATS and Ruhi reveal to the media that Qureshi was actually a terrorist.

A few days later, while watching Ruhana’s play – based on chess and dedicated to Pandit – Danish realises that Pandit was in fact the play’s “weak pawn” who befriended a “strong rook” (Danish) who would kill a “wicked king” (Qureshi) to wreak revenge. Shocked by this epiphany, Danish finds Pandit’s housekeeper, who says that she did not actually see Wazir on the night he attacked Pandit, but remembers an instruction about a USB pen-drive which Pandit had told her to give to Danish if he came looking for Wazir at all. The pen-drive contains a video of Pandit, who explains that Wazir never existed – he was just a persona created by Pandit, who knew that, due to his handicap, he was powerless against Qureshi, who he wanted dead.

Pandit intentionally dropped his wallet near Noorie’s grave so Danish could find it and befriend him. His knife wounds from Wazir’s attack were self-inflicted, and he had used voice recordings to pose as Wazir on the phone. Pandit had sacrificed himself to ensure that Danish would kill Qureshi and get revenge for both of them. Shaken by the revelation, Danish and Ruhana reunite.