The makers of Yodha will tell you this is an action cliffhanger powered by a one-man army that rides high on patriotism and involves a thrill-a-moment template that mostly takes place within a confined space. What they will not tell you is that Yodha is a mish-mash of every Hollywood hijack thriller out there, tilting quite a bit towards Die Hard 2 and fully leaning in the direction of Non-Stop.

The Bruce Willis/ Liam Neeson of Yodha is the man who is slowly but surely finding his groove as a 'yodha'. After the success of Shershaah, including a few awards and a fresh lease of life as an action star with a heart that beats for the country, Sidharth Malhotra dons the soldier's uniform once again in this Karan Johar-produced film that has newcomers Pushkar Ojha and Sagar Ambre as directors.

Yodha opens somewhere in Bangladesh where Sidharth's Arun Katyal, a member of a not-so-covert task force called 'Yodha' (but of course!) disobeys the chain of command and single-handedly obliterates a pack of terrorists. We are told that Arun has the habit of often acting alone in risky situations, which invites the mock-ire of his wife Priyamvada (Raashii Khanna), a high-ranking bureaucrat in the government. Their romance involves quoting lines from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (this is a Dharma production, after all) and one romantic song later, Arun finds himself in the middle of a hijack. The flight is 814 — in what is perhaps a nod to the 1999 hijack of IC-814, the longest hijack in Indian aviation history — and Arun's failure to prevent a high-profile death on it sends his world spiralling. Yodha is disbanded, Arun's personal life falls apart and a few years later, the man — now sporting a stubble and a head of messy hair, which is Bollywood's short code for a broken man — finds himself employed as an air commando.

But hijacks follow Arun with more alacrity than the paparazzi shadows Taimur. A last-minute diversion finds Arun on a flight to London, with a tremendous amount of predictable foreshadowing written into the script. For example, a trainee pilot (played by Kritika Bharadwaj) claims right at the beginning that she can fly the plane herself, which you know will surely happen, albeit in stressful circumstances at some point in the film. Similarly, a loudmouth on the same flight is the one who creates the maximum ruckus when things quickly go south.

As expected, a hijack takes place and the situation plays out in such a way that Arun comes under suspicion, which, of course, is used as a smokescreen for the writers to throw in twists and turns that fly thicker than an Abbas Mustan thriller. Problems are thrown at Arun faster than he can scream 'Yipee ki-yay', with one of them involving combating a surprise adversary who delivers ninja-like drops and kicks dressed in a sari. Disha Patani, with a one-note expression and a wig that dramatically flies off in the middle of a big reveal, stars as a flight purser.

The big twist in the tale involves the revelation that this is no ordinary hijack, taking place as it is at the forefront of India-Pakistan peace talks. A terrorist pops in to say that Kashmir is business and war is religion (or some such twisted-in-translation quote) and like in Tiger Zinda Hai a few months ago, India and Pakistan are shown fighting a common enemy with an Indian soldier rising to the occasion to 'protect' both countries.

Yodha may not be a terribly smart film, but it gets the memo of being entertaining and delivers on it. What also works is that the film keeps itself from taking the jingoistic route, which in today's times of hyper-nationalism and movies peddling subtle-to-sledgehammer propaganda is a lot to be thankful for.

Saving Yodha from crashing even in the middle of episodes of extreme turbulence (read shaky writing and directionless directing) is the fact that Sidharth has discovered that using his fists is far more lucrative than attempting any kind of movement of his facial muscles. The looker still struggles when it comes to emotions but that action hero tag, given his physicality and agility, sits well on him. And while Sidharth still has a long way to go before he acquires the smooth menace of "I will find you and I will kill you", he is off to a good start.

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