Friday, March 23, 2012

Movie Review: Agent Vinod


The good news – Agent Vinod taps the Don films on the shoulder and asks them to piss off. The bad news – the film is not as smart and entertaining as it thinks it is.

Starring Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor, Agent Vinod runs around aimlessly with a collection of goofy illogicalities. But that would have been fine had the film completely devoted itself to being a tacky tongue in cheek garish comedy thriller the way the 1970’s film of the same name was. Unfortunately this film seems like an unappetizing byproduct oozing out of a blender stuffed with Sunny Deol’s Hero: The Love Story of a Spy, Anubhav Sinha’s Dus and Akshay Kumar’s Mr Bond. The fact that director Sriram Raghavan has made the excellent Ek Haseena Thi and the magnificent Johnny Gaddar gives one the impression that the final cut of Agent Vinod is not the film he originally wanted to make. It’s beautifully shot, but it clumsily dances on the line between the merely passable and the completely boring. In fact even the much acclaimed trailer of the film was misleading, because most of the good stuff doesn’t even appear in the movie. 

The story is hideously convoluted - Agent Vinod (Saif Ali Khan) is a super spy in a super-secret Indian intelligence agency. He escapes from Afghanistan from the clutches of terrorist leader Huzefa (Shahbaz Khan from Chandrakaanta) and is handed a new assignment by his boss (BP Singh, the creator of CID) – to stop an escalating terror attack in the country. The mission takes him (and us) through all sorts of snazzy places including Latvia, Russia, Morocco, Delhi and even Karachi, where he meets strange farcical characters like a drug running African sheikh (a hamming Prem Chopra), his personal doctor (Kareena Kapoor), a faux Indo-Russian warlord (a hilarious Ram Kapoor, speaking in Russian accent), various clandestine conspirators (Dhritiman Chatterjee, Adil Hussain, Gulshan Grover). The locales are gorgeous, but that doesn't necessarily make for a smart movie. Moreover, the second half and finale are so clichéd that even a novice moviegoer would know exactly what would happen twenty minutes in.

There are a few action scenes, but they’re poorly choreographed and shot – it is impossible to make out what’s going on. It doesn’t help that some of the CGI is dubious. Product placements are a plenty – most of Agent Vinod feels like being stuck in a never-ending commercial starring a glamorous real life couple. Saif and Kareena reprise the chemistry that they shared in Tashan, but sadly the soulless hangover from that movie seems to have carried on in Agent Vinod. The film at times breaks into trippy segments that are juxtaposed to classic Hindi songs and out of place sound effects. These actually work because of Raghavan’s sheer visual artistry, but the problem is that these sequences keep going away to make way for the trite formula found in most Abbas Mustan movies. The film’s best moment involves a stunning single shot scene to the backdrop of ‘Raabta’ – it truly makes you wish Raghavan was given more control of the script and editing.  

Agent Vinod doesn’t explode – it fizzles with a damp whimper. Unless you like your whacky spy thrillers in heavy-handed doses, you’re better off watching the real thing – superstar Balakrishna’s Vijayendra Varma on YouTube.   






(First published in Mumbaiboss)

12 comments:

  1. Went with very low expectations after reading indifferent reviews from most of the movie geeks including you. I think it was pretty good, the climax could have been better , but otherwise I really enjoyed the movie. Not as good as Sriram's earlier films though.

    Moreover, although I don't care about the star ratings, you seem to be little inconstant. 'Don 2' got a better rating from you than this. That I simply cannot accept, specially when you start your article with "Agent Vinod taps the Don films on the shoulder and asks them to piss off" :)
    I think the movie is getting too much flak just because it didn't meet the huge expectations every body had from a Sriram flick.

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  2. Don 2 provided a lot of unintentional hilarity, which is why I rated it slightly higher than AV.

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  3. credit to srk he can make a film like don 1,2 look good

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  4. That is humorous indeed but fails to even minimally answer the question raised supported with astute reasoning.

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  5. the action was shoddy..very poorly choreographed..especially when the octane level starts to rise up a bit there was a very hasty end to the scene(the scene when he shoots at the truck in the starting and next you see is the truck has toppled,actually not see but just imagine because they never showed it well in the first place)..and then the scene with raabta in background was like watching max payne..i wish i had read your review before going for the movie..for me the movie was an excuse for the star cast to go to exotic locations..tat sums it up!!

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  6. I gave the honest truth. If that doesn't qualify as astute reasoning I can't help it.

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  7. It was utter bullshit..Unintentionally hilarious for most of the time except for the rare glimpses of Shriram's talent..especially liked the Thalapathy tribute :)
    Shoddy script and character development..Cant believe the same guy gave us Johnny Gaddar...

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  8. This is strange trend I noticed among critics reviewing Agent Vinod , the reviews are more of comparisons with Raghvan's earlier work or about not meeting those huge imaginary expectations ! Which is preposterous considering this was decent attempt on the spy genre which must be encouraged rather than flanked upon .
    Agree , movie was incoherent in parts and lacked that punchy climax but review must reflect the movie and should not be an essay on falling expectations.

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  9. Bang on! Fadnavis sahib, you are an honest critic plus a genuine movie buff. Please consider this very well articulated feedback in future.

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  10. Totally agree with you. I went with high expectations not because it was a Saif-Kareena movie but because the director was the guy who made the brilliant Ek Haseena Thi. I was disappointed. Not a patch on Vidya Balan's Kahaani which I saw only today. Vidya is by herself more than a match for Saif-Kareena combined.

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  11. The best moment in the film as you said was the scene with Raabta in the background...it has a tarantino kind of a touch to it ! Hope the movie had many such moments.

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