Pakistan has banned India's James Bond, outlawing a high-octane Bollywood action flick in which an Indian secret agent thwarts spies from detonating a nuclear bomb in Delhi. Agent Vinod, which grossed $9.7 million on its opening weekend, shows an Indian agent jetting around the world, dodging assassins to save his country from nuclear armageddon plotted by Pakistani spies and terrorists.
Saif Ali Khan, its producer and star, has defended the film, but unsurprisingly Pakistani censors took a dim view. "The film contains anti-Pakistan material," the Film Censor Board's deputy chairman Ashraf Gondal told AFP. Lashkar-e-Taiba, which the film shows ISI agents colluding with, was blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks that left 166 people dead and which ruptured peace talks between India and Pakistan for three years.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence in 1947 and came to the brink of nuclear conflict in 2002. "Our film shows that there are good Pakistanis and bad Pakistanis. There are people who want to be friends with India and there are people who want to create trouble in India. We have shown both the sides," Khan said last week.