Naam Shabana: Skip it Baby!
Shivam Nair’s film Naam Shabana is nowhere near to what Neeraj Pandey did with’A Wednesday’, ’Baby’ and’Special 26’. Naam Shabana fails utterly to cash in the talents of powerhouse actors like Manoj Bajpayee, Danny Dengzopa(Feroze Khan), Anupam Kher(Shuklaji), Manav Vij and Zakir Hussain. The South Indian heartthrob Prithviraj Sukumaran(Tony) who has dished out fabulous roles earlier down south is wasted in this Bollywood outing as a villain. These actors are dwarfed to do nothing significant. Akshay Kumar(Ajay Singh Rajput) does nothing different here. He appears like a hero and vanishes too like a hero. Unfortunately, their presence doesn’t elevate the film to an edge of the seat kind of a thriller.
Naam Shabana’s titular role is played by Taapsee Pannu. She is good in action sequences but falls short in portraying a character who fights hard to hide her vulnerability and the required panache to be a secret agent.
The film tells us the journey of a middle class Mumbai Muslim girl who is picked up by a secret agency for a special task to eliminate an international arms dealer. The agency claims to have some strong reasons and observations to recruit Shabana as one among them and Shabana has her own personal interest to toe the line of the agency. Neeraj Pandey’s good intentions to portray a strong woman who can easily bring road Romeos to their knees falls flat when she change her garb from a normal college girl to a special task agent. Shabana as an agent is seen protected, rescued and even spoon-fed by the male agents around her.