Review: Editor Garry BH, known for his stellar work in films like Ghazi, Goodachari and the HIT films, turns director with SPY. While the ideas he has on paper seem fun, and sometimes even novel, the execution is unfortunately a mishmash of tropes that don’t always blend well together.
Jai Vardhan (Nikhil Siddhartha) is a RAW agent on the lookout for answers. His brother Subhash (Aryan Rajesh) was proclaimed dead during a mission and his family hasn’t been the same ever since. Head of RAW (Makrand Deshpande) sends him and his loyal friend Kamal (Abhinav Gomatam) on a mission to track down the supposedly dead terrorist Kadhir Khan (Nithin Mehta) who’s posing a threat to the country. Joining them on this mission is Saraswati (Sanya Thakur) and being a thorn on his Jai’s side is his ex-girlfriend (Iswarya Menon). Also missing are files pertaining to Subhash Chandra Bose that contain secrets the country has kept hidden so far. If all of this sounds like a lot – it’s because it truly is!
The way Garry begins the film, you expect Jai to have moments where he’s torn between his desire to serve the country and finding his brother’s killer. However, that rarely happens. His brother’s death is mostly used as a catalyst to rile him up when needed. The files pertaining to Subhash Chandra Bose and the Battle of Kohima are unique, yet they’re explained away haphazardly in the middle of action-packed scenes. A villain is introduced too late in the story for you to care and his placeholder doesn’t seem that threatening either. Essentially, a lot of ideas in the film are never pushed to their limit because there’s too many of them to begin with.
In the middle of honey trapping, body doubles, scientists going rogue, et al, the only one having fun seems to be Abhinav Gomatam, who’s rib-ticklingly funny with his one-liners. Where the film does work is that it’s taut. You might predict a lot of the ‘twists,’ but the film does hold your attention for a point of time. The love story throws a wrench in the proceedings, with unintentionally funny scenes. There’s also an odd lack of urgency in the way it all plays out even if you know time’s ticking. The writing just needed to be crisper and better.
Nikhil looks sincere, he even seems to have worked hard in the action sequences, but Garry doesn’t really utilise him fully. Rana plays a cameo in which he gets to smolder at the camera a lot. Abhinav truly gets to balance well between cracking a joke and firing a gun. Iswarya, Sanya, Makrand and others don’t really make a mark. Vishal Chandrasekhar’s Jhoom Jhoom is okay but Sricharan Pakala’s Azaadi apart from background score aids the film well. The cinematography by Vamsi Patchipulusu, Mark David, Julian Amaru Estrada and Keiko Nakahara is pretty good, and the editing is top-notch. The stunts are oddly plain okay, except for one shot in the rain.
SPY comes at a time when you’ve kind of seen various permutations and combinations of the same story told in different ways with varying motivations in numerous languages. Garry’s film has its heart in the right place, but it lacks the spunk to stand out.
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