After ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’ in which the Kabir Khan-Salman Khan film had overtones of Indo-Pak amity, the duo now train their sights on our Eastern neighbour. Jagatpur, in Kumaon, is the abode of Laxman Singh Bisht (Salman Khan) and younger brother Bharat (real-life brother Sohail). Laxman is derisively called ‘tubelight’ — the Indian connotation for a dim-witted fellow. Almost entirely dependent on his younger brother, he’s disconcerted when he fails to enlist in the army but Bharat gets selected. All this is against the backdrop of the 1962 Indo-Chinese war. His mentor, Banney Chacha (the late Om Puri, in possibly his last screen appearance) and magician Goga Pasha (a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan) instill in him ‘yakeen’ (self-belief) — a word the viewer would have to bear umpteen times throughout the 136-minute film.

It is this faith and self-belief that Laxman falls back on when Bharat fails to return from the warfront and there is no news of him. The other sub-plot in the film is of Li Ling (Chinese actress Zhu Zhu) and her son Guo (Matin Rey Tangu), Indian nationals from Calcutta, who are befriended by Laxman even as the villagers, led by Narayan (Mohd. Zeeshan Ayub) spout venom on the Chinese-origin duo.

Salman starts off with Rowan Atkinson type of contorted facial expressions, switches to gnashing his teeth and crying at will, and roaming around with a pair of boots strung around his neck, generally looking lost — least impressive in every act. Even his interactions with Maj. Rajbir Tokas (Yashpal Sharma), supposedly dramatic moments in the film, fail to impress. Even the war scenes fail to strike a chord. The only redeeming feature of the film is the scenes between Salman and the young Matun from Arunachal Pradesh.

Officially adapted from Hollywood’s 2015 ‘Little Boy’, the film attempts to discourse on the Gandhian principles of non-violence and tolerance. ‘Tubelight’ has pedestrian dialogues—the young boy’s name Guo (pronounced with the second vowel missing) is the target of puerile jokes.

Looks like Salman has a mandatory obligation of releasing a film on Eid. Salman ‘bhai’ seems to have taken his sobriquet quite literally — making films on Indo-Pak ‘bhai bhai’ and now Indo-China ‘bhai bhai’!