NAAM SHABANA.
After a long dry spell of good Bollywood commercial cinema, Neeraj Pandey’s prequel to ’Baby’ was a much awaited film .
Bollywood has seldom experimented with a film on a lady G.I Joe so credit must be given to the production team to bring out a prequel to a superhit film with a woman oriented script focusing not on woman empowerment but her physical strength to match the macho villains.
The film takes off smoothly in the first half focusing on evolution of the protagonist and the second half is packed with action and twists , and that is where the script falters a bit.
The second half belongs to Akshay Kumar and the focus shifts from Taapsee. It could be the right move by director as Taapsee is still evolving as an actor and lacks the efficiency of handling the film on her own.
Though she handled her role in Pink quite brilliantly, but this was an action oriented film, and she lacked the killer looks and the attitude to intimidate her opponents. Perhaps if she would have taken some lessons from Uma Thurman’s performance in Kill Bill, she would have easily carried the entire film on her shoulders without the help of Akshay Kumar. But let us not take it away from her as she is in the learning phase and guaranteed to evolve as a better actor with every film.
Another shortcoming of the film is the climax. It was quite filmy and unrealistic. Situations simplify and everything seems to be served on a platter. The script writer could have put in an anticlimax to make the audience sit on the edge of their seat. A few tense moments would have made this film as good as ’Baby’.
The performances were average, Manoj Bajpai, Taapsee and Akshay Kumar looked quite casual in their approach.
The soundtrack has little significance in the film but the background score was good.
Neeraj Pandey needs to pull up his socks as he is one of the most talented directors in Bollywood and an average movie is not expected of him. He has had a brilliant filmography and the audience expects consistency from him as his name is bigger than the actors working in his film.
Overall, a one time watch. Definitely not a waste of time and money, but do not expect too much out of it.
My rating- 2.75/5