Review: Agent Vinod

Director: Sriram Raghavan
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor
Rating: **

For once I thought that I am going to watch a movie which will have some great car-chases, guns, girls and rock music. Alas, I was wrong. ‘Agent Vinod’ is a movie which delivers all of them but in a manner which takes away their charm.

Okay, first of all, some facts. Agent Vinod is a so-called remake of the 1977 thriller by same name. The movie is being directed by Sriram Raghwan (he made ‘Johnny Gaddar’ and ‘Ek Hasina Thi’).

Agent Vinod, which was supposed to be the first modern spy-thriller, happens to  be a time waste for a normal Indian cinegoer as the pace with which film progresses is un understandable by them. Yes, for people who take this film as an entry of Bollywood to the Bond-MI generation will like it a bit.

The story is horribly complicated - - Agent Vinod (Saif Ali Khan) is a super spy working for RAW (Indian intelligence agency). He escapes from Afghanistan from the clutches of terrorist leader Huzefa (Shahbaz Khan), thanks to his intellect and heroics and not-to-forget another agent (Ravi Kishen).

The film has lacunae from the beginning as the director according to me wanted to give the movie a James Bond type start (casting comes during the action scene where the protagonist makes an escape), but fails miserably.

Anyways, technical faults later. After Ravi Kishen is killed during a mission, Saif is sent to solve the mission by his boss (B. P. Singh, the creator of CID).

His mission is to stop an atrocious terror attack in New Delhi. The mission takes him (and us obviously) through all sorts of flashy places including Latvia, Russia, Morocco, Delhi and even Karachi, where he meets strange, farcical characters like a drug-running African sheikh (Prem Chopra), his personal doctor (British spy agent, played by Kareena Kapoor), an Indo-Russian warlord (Ram Kapoor with his pathetic Russian accent), and various secret conspirators.

 The locales are gorgeous, but that doesn’t necessarily make for a smart movie. The movie necessairily reminds me of ‘Mausam’, another recent disaster made by Pankaj Kapur, who tried to contain ocean water in small bucket. This movies, however, boasts of more beautiful places than ‘Mausam’ but that doesn’t really helps in making up for a dead story.

Talking about the genre (action I suppose), the movie has few action scenes but very poorly choreographed and shot, leaving one very beautifully single-shot scene where Saif-Kareena have a gunfight with enemies in motel. The whole sequence is beautifully shot (saved the day for me). You surely would love it with ‘Raabta’ playing in background (I wanted to watch that whole song).

At some moments, you would feel like leaving the movie, but I feel the movie really changes in the last and that suspense factor comes into play when Saif gets to know about the whole plot.

There is very less space for songs in the movie but each song has a whole story running through it which makes song less prominent at that time and it’s after the sequence that you come to know that there was a song playing before. I’ll do the talking is already a hit (so what it was ‘inspired’ from ‘Rasputin’).

Saif deserves the credit for his acting, considering that he takes the most screen space in the movie and has been able to pull it off quite well. Kareena Kapoor gets second most screen space (I think that was expected from nawab saheb) and plays her part well. All characters have played their part well but the only bad thing about the casting is that some great actors like Rajit Kapoor and Gulshan Kapoor get to do only come-and-go roles. They could have been exploited a bit more.

What to look out for: Saif’s performance, Saifeena chemistry, Firangi chics, single-shot Raabta, Beautiful locales, Mujra song

What to ignore: Some direction flaws, fast pace (don’t worry if you land into a new country in a flash), almost no songs, great actors ignored

What about budget: Made with a high budget of Rs 60 crore and considering that the movie did a business of aroud Rs 22 crores in the first weekend, the movie is expected to fall a little short of the budget.

In all, Agent Vinod is good in bits and pieces but should have been made more simple and with a clear motive. Although, it has masala to be made into a franchise. Well, we can expect a sewuel to it as this one being given an open ending. Much more was expected from Sriram, who gave movies like Johnny Gaddar and Ek Hasina Thi and thus he disappoints considering this history.