Phantom

About the film

Phantom is a 2015 Indian Hindi-language spy action thriller film directed by Kabir Khan and produced by Sajid Nadiadwala and Siddharth Roy Kapur. The film stars Saif Ali Khan and Katrina Kaif in leading roles. The screenplay of the film was written in coordination with author Hussain Zaidi's book Mumbai Avengers on the aftermath of 26/11 Mumbai attacks. The film was released worldwide on 28 August 2015 to mixed reviews from critics.

Plot

The story opens with a narration of Mumbai and the assault it suffered across the world at the hands of the perpetrators of the 26/11 terror attacks.

Sometime in present day, a car chase in Chicago leads to a scuffle between a man ostensibly named Jude Rosario and an American male known as Matthew Brody. The scuffle ends with Brody falling into the icy waters of Chicago River, and his body missing. This results in Rosario being arrested and convicted of murder.

A flashback to six months prior shows the office of the Indian RAW chief Roy, where he and his trusted men plan a daring covert operation. The man, known as Jude Rosario in the opening sequence, is shown to be Captain Daniyal Khan, a dead-end ex-soldier with a completely deadpan sense of life and death which is pulled out of oblivion and pressed into service by the spy agency to wreak vengeance on the men who planned the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. He agrees on the assurance that he will be reinstated in the Indian army to the same rank from which he was court-martialled, which meant regaining the respect of his estranged father, retd. Col. Usman Khan, and mentee, Dilawar Singh. His only team member, Nawaz Mistry helps him find his first target Sajid Mir at a cricket match in London. On reaffirming his identity after breaking into his apartment, Daniyal rigs up an explosion which kills Sajid, which makes the headlines explaining it was accidental, resulting in an investigation by the Pakistani ISI.

Production

Kabir Khan and author S. Hussain Zaidi had come together to collaborate on Kabir's then untitled film, based on the scenario post-26/11 Mumbai attacks with Saif Ali Khan and Katrina Kaif signed in leading roles. The screenplay of the film is an adaptation and is co-written in conjunction with Hussain's then-unreleased book. The film earlier had a working title as Daniyal Khan, before being titled Phantom. Saif Ali Khan and Kaif have reportedly learnt Kurdish and Arabic for their roles. The plot of the film weaves a fictional story to kill the perpetrators of 2008 Mumbai attacks- Sajid Mir, David Coleman Headley, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi (named as Sabahuddin Umvi) and Hafiz Saeed (named as Haaris Saeed). The film also depicts incidents similar to the Assassination of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh and Boston Marathon bombing. Kashmiri Sufi singer Qazi Touqeer featured in the Afghan Jalebi song.

Phantom marks Saif Ali Khan's only film to be a billed UTV Motion Pictures production, with Siddharth Roy Kapur attached as producer; despite several of his previous films such as Race (2008), Kurbaan (2009) and Race 2 being distributed by the company, he had never formally worked on any of their productions. It is also Kaif's second of three films to be produced by UTV, the first being Tees Maar Khan (2010) and the third being Fitoor (2016), while her fourth and final collaboration with Kapur came with the Disney–produced musical Jagga Jasoos (2017), which UTV distributed.

Filming began in October 2013 in Beirut, Lebanon. Around 10% of the film was shot in Lebanon in areas including downtown Beirut, the populous area of Khandaq al-Ghameeq, and the mountainous areas of Kfardebian, with the latter two representing Syria. The shoot of the film required a recreation of a Syrian refugee camp, which involved almost 400 locals in acting as rebel militias. The sets of the film were so realistic that many people in the area believed actual militia groups had set up camp, and the Lebanese army began circling planes over the set. However, the confusion was cleared after the first day. Due to the country's recent political turmoil, security was provided to the crew. In January 2014, action sequences were shot in Kashmir near Pahalgam hill station and in a ski resort in Gulmarg for five days. The scenes involved a blast sequence in the peak of winter, when the entire valley was covered in a 10-foot blanket of snow. In March 2014, filming continued in a small town in Malerkotla, Punjab where the area was recreated to resemble a Pakistani marketplace. The entire area was dressed up to look authentic, complete with Urdu hoarding, posters, and flags. The makers narrowed down Malerkotla due to its mosque, local people, narrow lanes, and overall architecture, which creates the verisimilitude of a town from Pakistan. In July 2014, filming resumed in London, United K…

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