Independence Day Special: 7 times Akshay Kumar was the king of cinematic patriotism

This Akshay Kumar and Sonakshi Sinha proves that a soldier is never off-duty, even when he’s on holiday. The 2014 action-thriller revolves around Virat Bakshi, an army captain who’s back home on leave, but can’t seem to get away from his work either way, whether it’s tracking down terrorists or detecting bomb scares from across Mumbai.

Baby was a relatively successful film for Akshay, that also starred Rana Daggubati and Taapsee Pannu. The 2015 film concerns a temporary task force called ‘baby’ that is meant to track down and eliminate potential terrorists (you see there’s a theme here, to be continued). Akshay’s Ajay Singh chases after suspected terrorists Maulana and Bilal, from India, to Nepal, to Saudi Arabia.

This 2016 film saw Akshay and Nimrat Kaur trying to leave Kuwait in the midst of the 1990 Iraqi invasion, and shows how one man endeavours to airlift over 170,000 Indians out of a small, terror-stricken country.

The film, along with Airlift, that won Akshay his first National Film Award. This is a little more different than the other films and is more about the personal journey of a naval officer who tries to prove himself to be innocent when he kills the man his wife (Ileana D’Cruz) was having an affair with. Tensions run high as court proceedings go on and cases of corruption in the military are exposed, all culminating in an ending that we won’t reveal to you (might as well watch it).

At times a little light-hearted, at times tragic, this film is a sequel to Jolly LLB. It sees Akshay's rendition of Jolly, with the support of his ‘loving’ wife played by Huma Qureshi, take on the case of a widow whose husband was killed in a staged military encounter. He simultaneously exposes the gamut of corruption and misrepresentation that goes on in both the police force and Indian legal system.

A spin-off of the earlier mentioned film, Baby, Naam Shabana centers around Taapsee Pannu’s character, Shabana, as she tries to avenge her lover’s death and then gets caught up in arms smuggling and terrorism. Akshay Kumar’s Ajay Singh is there to help her out, for good measure.

The most recent of Akshay’s outings that is slated for release this Independence Day. The film revolves around Tapan Das, a manager who wants to be responsible for constructing free India’s first hockey team to win gold at the Olympics. The verdict is still out on this film, but we’ll have an opinion ready for you in about 3-4 days.