‘Uljhan’ movie review: Janhvi Kapoor is stuck in a pointless thriller

Janhvi Kapoor in a scene from ‘Uljhan’ | Photo Credit: YouTube/Junglee Pictures

What kind of detective film is this film of Sudhanshu Saria? entanglement? Its beginning a convinced (2018) in a pantsuit: The patriotic female protagonist, driven by loyalty and heritage, enlists to serve her country on foreign soil. Indo-Pak diplomatic relations, as tense and delicate as they were in 1971, inform the narrative stakes. Both films are from Junglee Pictures, and the editor in both cases is Nitin Baid. If that wasn’t enough, the new film also has a song with the title of ‘Watan’ – ineffectively pasted over the opening credits and thus quickly forgotten.

This happened much later, in the final moments of his 134-minute program, Ulaz showed its true colours. Without giving too much away, one can say that its turn from tense thriller to overly ambitious franchise-spinner was a step in the wrong direction. It’s a particularly egregious example of the ongoing Marvelisation of Bollywood: films so distracting they don’t hold up, fanning future possibilities without successfully completing the task at hand.

Suhana Bhatia (Janhvi Kapoor) is a young Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer who comes from a lineage of patriots. At the start of the film, we meet her on a diplomatic detail in Kathmandu; speaking on the phone, she emphasises “strategy” and “leverage”, but is instead reminded by her superior to simply “observe”. Suhana has a legitimate weight on her shoulders – because of her background, yes, but also because of her gender – which becomes even more evident when she is appointed Deputy High Commissioner to the UK, the youngest person to be appointed to the position.

In London, Suhana negotiates business deals and ignores the sexist jeers of her colleagues. She meets and makes out with a guy named Nakul, who is introduced to her as a Michelin-starred chef (Gulshan Devaiah can sell anything to the world). Before we know it, Nakul is blackmailing her with her sex tape, demanding confidential information. Their meetings after this point are genuinely creepy – the excellent Shreya Dev Dube handles the camera – but also tip to the comic. “These countries, borders… these are just lines in the sand,” Nakul tells her, sounding like a drunken professor.

from the beginning, confusion Speaks modern, multicultural languages. Suhana is fluent in Nepali, Urdu, French and Japanese. She can recognize backgrounds by accurate dialects and accents. Her colleagues at the embassy represent a healthy cross-section of India – Roshan Mathew is brilliantly portrayed in the streaming series poacherMalayalam has a hilarious blast as RAW officer Sabin. But the other characters are not well served. Meiyang Chang wanders into a thankless role, and when Nakul, claiming to be an ISI agent, gives his name as “Mohammed Humayun Akhtar”, it is so obviously exaggerated and anachronistic that you just know it is fake.

Janhvi Kapoor is a second-generation actress playing a third-generation diplomat. The film mentions ‘nepotism’ right at the beginning. Kapoor is surrounded by a strong secondary cast: Adil Hussain, Rajesh Tailang, Jitendra Joshi, Rajendra Gupta, Ali Khan. confusion — co-written by Saria and Parveez Sheikh, with Atiqa Chauhan on dialogues — makes a point by portraying the world of high-level diplomacy as still oppressively male. Suhana is a fast-paced, muscle-shaking role, and Kapoor conveys her increasing disorientation and self-doubt well. Yet the film doesn’t trust its star, with an explanatory background score at crucial junctures spoiling the silences crucial to the thriller.

The implausibility piles up: high-ranking officials moving in and out of countries without informing anyone; a plot of laughably absurd proportions; a confrontation between Suhana and Sabin that involves the front door being left open. The intriguing second half collapses in on itself. It seems the makers suddenly ran out of budget – or worse, ideas – and settled for a cheesy climax set in the shrooms of Delhi. On that note, is the Research and Analysis Wing headquartered in the Statesman House building in Connaught Place? Should be fun to find out.

Uljh is currently running in cinemas