Siddharth Anand's Fighter has successfully crossed the ₹150-crore mark. On day 9, the film, which marks the first-ever on-screen pairing of superstars Hrithik Roshan and Deepika Padukone, minted ₹5.35 crore (across all languages) at the domestic box office, according to a Sacnilk report. In total, the movie has accumulated ₹151.85 crore, the report added. Fans, including us, loved Hrithik Roshan in the role of Squadron Leader Shamsher Pathania, aka Patty, and Deepika Padukone as Squadron Leader Minal Rathore, aka Mini, in the movie.
In a BTS video dropped by the makers ahead of Fighter's release, Deepika Padukone can be heard sharing her thoughts on the film. The actress said, “There is patriotism but it's also entertaining. There is drama. It's funny. There is romance, adrenaline. So it just feels like a wholesome entertainer. If I had to summarise it in one word, just ‘absolute.'”
In the same video, Anil Kapoor, who portrayed the character of Group Captain Rakesh Jai Singh in Fighter, expressed, “The whole approach of the detailing and the performances and the pitching of the film is very very mainstream but very real. You know these kinds of films have longer legs.”
In an NDTV review, Saibal Chatterjee gave Fighter 2.5 stars and said, “Fighter is also a story of enduring camaraderie between Shamsher and his Air Force Academy batchmate Sartaj Gill (Karan Singh Grover). The relationship between the two fighter pilots and between Shamsher and Sartaj's wife Saanchi (Sanjeeda Sheikh) lays the foundation for the climax of the film. However, the bromance is a largely one-man affair. Fighter is Hrithik Roshan's film and the screenplay never lets him out of sight.”
“The muted romance that blossoms between the hero and Minal is set against the background of a tragedy. It provides Fighter a few of its more convincing moments because the exchanges between the two are allowed some breathing spaces,” Saibal Chatterjee added.
Fighter is jointly backed by Viacom18 Studios and Marflix Pictures.