A well-trained Pakistani spy sent on a mission to destabilize India after Operation Sindoor suffers a severe head injury. He loses his memory. His employers in Rawalpindi go into a tizzy, his colleagues in India get into a bind and the film about the erratic exploits of an amnesiac secret agent flies off on a delightful but uneven tangent.
What’s not to like about this noxious cockroach collection, one might ask. A lot because the arrow is that flying arrow Refs have a fuzzy head that doesn’t know where it’s going?
In is a great deal flying arrow It keeps spiraling out of control as the film makes its way through a practice that harks back in spirit, but certainly not in substance, to the Hollywood spy parodies that Mel Brooks and Mike Myers operated with considerable commercial success decades ago.
flying arrowwho sinks into the bed spread by the detective who remembers nothing and switches sides to begin a quest for ‘himself’ follows, thrives on fishing in troubled waters and lets unbridled unrest run riot.
Akash A Kaushik, the writer of Housefull 4 and Bhool Bhulaya 2 and 3, made his directorial debut. flying arrow Misses its mark by a fair distance. It descends into chaos in more ways than one and never comes close to finding a way out.
In the era of Dhurandhar, flying arrow Desires to be Austin Powers. That’s a big ask for a film that treats a genre as a game over which it has little control.
The film has dashes of inspired craziness and, just as importantly, the presence of the ever-reliable Ayushmann Khurrana to keep it going when its insouciant emptiness threatens to derail the comic carousel and undermine the originality of the premise.
To strengthen his cover in India, Pakistani spy, Bilal Ahmed aka Vikrant Thapar (Khurana), has a wife, Yamini (Sara Ali Khan) and a mother-in-law (Supriya Pilgaonkar), who is worried that her daughter’s marriage is on the brink of collapse.
Yamini works in the finance department of the Indian Ministry of Defence, which makes her an unlikely asset to the ISI agent who doubles as her husband until the man forgets who he is.
Khurrana and her co-actors, most of whom are seasoned actors, know what they have signed up for. They never stop going with the flow.
Of particular note is the performance by Mukul Dev in his last screen appearance. He plays a flamboyant, flamboyant terrorist charged with planning fidayeen attacks that always seem more likely to boomerang on him.
Starting out as a straightforward spy thriller, flying arrow When a Pakistani spy loses track of where he came from and where he must go. The confusion in the mind of a confused man takes away from the film and not always in a good way.
A person asks Bilal who now believes that he is Vikrant: You are a Hindu, how are you reading Urdu? seriously? An aside (added as a mark of identification) marks a monumental ignorance of the language, if not outright prejudice. Not funny at all!
The film’s writer-director knows the dynamics of the game he’s trying his hands on only marginally better than the film’s sleazy hero. He follows the rules of the genre and creates a spoof that isn’t as clever as it should be. flying arrow There are many mistakes, and yet one continues to move forward on an even keel.
While this may not be enough to elevate the film into the stratosphere, it is enough to hold flying arrow Flying at a reasonable altitude and speed in search of a meaningful target.
The target moves further and further away as the rigmarole unfolds but the flight of the arrow does not stop until the hurly-burly.
flying arrow Intelligence turns the action on its head and runs with whatever is generated in the process. The idea is to look at the fun side of a serious business and derive joy from it.
But the film produced by Dharma Productions and Shiksha Entertainment is facing many challenges on the way. Take the slapstick approach of a film about a mission gone wrong in your stride and you can find moments in the film that are actually entertaining, if only mildly so in the main.
The secret agent from across the border sneaks into India with a clear brief and then forgets key details of the job he is assigned. He begins to imagine himself as an Indian counter-terrorism operative determined to prove his worth.
His nonplussed boss, General Mir (Gulshan Grover) and his then superior Niazi (Ram Kapoor) go into full damage control mode but Bilal proves to be an arrow that can no longer be quivered.
Khurrana, whose career is dotted with screen roles designed to flow against the tide, slips into the skin of a man who is the very antithesis of a big-screen secret agent. As a man who can’t tell the difference between reality and fiction, he delivers a performance that holds the film together.
As for Sara Ali Khan, the role she plays is secondary in nature. Yamini is envisioned as a provision. This is all he is allowed to be.
Gulshan Grover and Ram Kapoor, playing Pakistani army men fighting a losing battle, add to the comic energy with their clear awareness of what’s required of them in a film that comes out perfectly with its insane plot.
There are several other actors in the cast who leave an impression. As Bilal’s compatriot Suhail Nayyar, who has infiltrated India’s counter-terrorist organization and is hard-pressed to understand his partner’s unpredictable actions, and Smita Tambe and Rahul Bose as senior intelligence officers, Bilal works his way up to do his best within the limited opportunities.
flying arrow Everything is turning right but one thing it definitely doesn’t produce is the kind of joy that will make you spin on the tracks. But it won’t inspire any major eye-rolls even if it makes you wonder what the whole point of the movie is.
Is that enough for a movie that aspires to take us on a faraway ride? The answer will only be yes if one is in a particularly tender mood. or else, flying arrow There is only one projectile that does not hit anything.
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