So, the much awaited action flick of the year is out and, sadly, it isn’t one of those edge-of-the-seat thrillers one would have expected, after all the hype it generated before its release. The concept of terrorism and media thriving on each other sounds promising but the concept is not developed in its full potential. Yes, the movie builds pace in the first half but runs out of steam completely in the second half. Too many mindless action sequences excite you less and instead bore you more. To top it all, editing in the second half was done way too haphazardly and it failed to sustain the narrative or the curiosity.
The movie was meant to be a tight and pacy thriller and, yes, it did have the potential to become one. But there were innumerable occasions where the narrative tumbles and the momentum slows down. For example, placement of none of the three songs made any sense. To add to the level of ridiculousness, after a crucial chase scene, the protagonists were shown as if they are promoting a soft-drink. Ha! Also, the movie could have done away with lampooning George Bush to create humor. Instead of wasting the screenplay with such stupid sequences, the director should have tried on things such as better characterization.
The script is rife with loopholes and a single review won’t be enough to list them all. Anyway, sample this: what on earth prevented the protagonists from making copies of the prized "pen-drive"(for the not so tech-savvys: it’s a piece of portable device used to store data:), instead of running all around protecting that? The so-called "News-reporter cum IIT software-engineer" must be knowing how to copy data at least. The cinematography and the background score are good but can’t make up for the other flaws in the movie.
Performances: In spite of having the meatiest role, Zayed Khan wears almost the same wooden expression and fails to impress. Shreya Saran seemed like having a difficulty mouthing her dialogs(though I had liked her in her small role in Awarapan). Nikitin Dheer tries hard to look suave and menacing but ends up hamming all through his role. His screen presence cannot be a substitute for his poor dialog delivery. Shabbir Ahluwalia is okay and so was Suneel Shetty who didn’t get much to do in his cameo.
I felt sorry for Vivek Oberoi who looked like paralyzed in his ill-conceived, half-baked role, and a lame script. No doubt, he is one of the finest actors of his generation, has a charismatic screen-presence, and a powerful dialogue-delivery, but the director failed to get much out of him.
Overall, no hope for the mission to be called anywhere near "accomplished". Apoorva Lakhia disappoints big time after giving at least a half-decent Shootout at Lokhandwala just about a year back.