Magazine : 
'Holiday'- Fast Paced, Exhilarating Roller-Coaster Ride
Not that "Holiday" is not without its flaws. What would life in the movies be without those? Sonakshi Sinha's role and presence in the plot can at best be termed as comic relief. She is less diva, more Mehmood. It is interesting to see how the director weaves the romantic element into what is predominantly a rugged man-to-man confrontation between an armyman on leave and a super-intelligent terrorist, who is seen to work out not from a dingy warehouse, but a normal home teeming with the scents and images of domestic harmony.
Full marks to the film's art and costumes designer. Apart from Sonakshi everyone looks at home. The irony of terror in the climate of normalcy is chilling. And it's a master stroke to cast the unknown Freddy Daruwala as the terrorist mastermind. Freddy looks and behaves like a hi-tech executive in a multinational rather than a diabolic terrorist. It's in the flashes of arrogant megalomania or his chilling cold-blooded laughter that we see the devilish man behind the white collar mask.
Freddy is quite the discovery of the year. As is the tradition in Good Versus Evil sagas, Akshay and Freddy don't come face-to-face until the finale. When they do....boom! Boy oh boy, the climactic one-to-one fistfight between Akshay and Freddy is so heart-in-the-mouth that audiences will forget to breathe for a good 15 minutes. This film rarely gives you time to come up for air. "Holiday" is that rare masala entertainer that leaves you breathless with excitement.
The writing is so skilled and the interweavement of the terrorist theme into the larger plot of an army man's vacation gone awry is so astute, that you end up excusing and overlooking the excesses. Govinda, for one, as Akshay's numb-skulled superior is completely out of place. You wish Govinda and Sonakshi's annoying characters would be expelled from the storytelling by some computer-generated magic. The ever dependable Sumeet Raghavan as Akshay's pal and colleague in counter-terrorism is able to make a much better place for himself. But it's the Akshay-Freddy conflict that keeps you riveted for nearly three hours of this pitch-perfect film's playing time.
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