Vishal Bhardwaj is back with another gritty book adaptation. The latest Hindi spy thriller film, stars Tabu, Ali Fazal, and Wamiqa Gabbi in lead roles. Its based on Amar Bhushan's espionage novel Escape to Nowhere, and has been produced by Vishal Bhardwaj and Rekha Bhardwaj under the banner of VB Films Production, with cinematography by Farhad Ahmed Dehlvi, and music by Vishal Bhardwaj himself.
With an intriguing background of the 1999 Kargil war, the film establishes its dark, murky and deceptive context. Krishna Mehra (KM) is an operative at the Research and Analysis Wing. Despite everything seeming to go according to plan, the disruptive and unprecedented murder of an undercover spy pushes KM to lead a secret operation against the suspicious presence of a mole in the intelligence unit.
Using a non-linear approach, the film starts off with the tone of a love letter. However, the unfortunate translation of the same on the small screen doesn't fare as well as one would have anticipated. Abrupt time jumps occupy the runtime of the movie, and the same takes you a good minute to get used to, but lesser time is spent in spelling out the characters' inspirations and motivations.
The star-studded cast panel works well in terms of the visual output and stature of this kind of films, but it compromises on the characterisation of fictional people making the story work. Azmeri Haque Badhon's character is one such introduction that is left underused.
Serious and dark allusions to Shakespeare's works stay constant in the new Bhardwaj project, and Tabu shines bright in her tight-lipped portrayal of a hardened agent; but the limited scope of writing for her character again deals with an incomplete characterisation.
Wamiqa Gabbi, too, rises to the occasion with barely much room to move. She was also the highlight of Vishal Bhardwaj's other recent OTT project Charlie Chopra, and so she's the one name we all need to watch out for. If only, we were let in on more scenes with her and Tabu in the film, maybe things could've been different.
On the contrary, Ali Fazal's character is perhaps the biggest downer because we're not able to place him as one thing or another, but even then, the greyness of his character isn't spelt out well for us either.
Watching this film will leave you with questions like - Are we in an era of VB films that simply rely on their star power? Or should the focus be more on how their characters are built up? Though the over welcoming switch to women-led narratives should’ve been a must-watch, his dark-toned films are not as profound as Bhardwaj once made them out to be.
You can still tune in for the mesmerising balance between a relatively younger cast and its union with the veteran lot, but other than the cast itself, the movie misses the target in terms of consolidating its foundation with grave characters worth looking out for.