Ashdoc''s movie review---Aiyaary

ashdoc

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'Aiyaary' means chameleon like---capable of changing appearance with every situation . That's what I learnt in the film . But director Neeraj Pandey is no chameleon and his films cannot change in style or appearance . His films from 'A wednesday' to 'Baby' to 'Aiyaary' are all in the same format . But it's a format that that is now running dry of new ideas from Neeraj .

Sure , the dose of high nationalism is there . The army spit and polish is there too . Scenes of crisply dressed people looking serious about their intent whether good or bad are there too . High tech gadgetry and latest guns and devices gives you expectations of a taut thriller . Hardly any scene shows the grime and poverty of India ; everyone has a exceptionally high standard of living .

But beneath the martial sounding music and high minded dialogues spouted from the mouth of the protagonists there is nothing . The manner in which the story has been presented is unduly prolonged and convoluted . A lot of unnecessary scenes shown to establish the strength of character of the heroes keep adding to the length of the film . And the film takes it's lesson of nationalism way too seriously but lacks substance .

Photography is good as always and music is patriotically good . But other than Manoj Bajpayee the others don't act well . Siddharth Malhotra looks too delicately goodlooking for a soldier . Both Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher are wasted . Rakul Preet Singh is gorgeous as eye candy . But she is a misfit for a patriotic sounding film .

Instead of what I was expecting ( tough soldiers killing enemies of the nation ) what I got to see was corruption in the army . Which is detected by a person ( Siddharth ) of a special team that is officially non existent but is for military intelligence . And he is so disillusioned by the corruption that he decides to desert the army and turn corrupt himself . But his superior ( Bajpayee ) is after him and chases him to England . But why does an arms dealer ( Anupam ) take enormous risk to help the superior ? And how come the girlfriend ( Rakul ) of the deserter get ready to give up everything and elope with him even though he has been fooling her by not even telling his real name ? Amazingly for such a clever person , his real name is revealed to her when his I card accidentally drops out of his wallet ; can it get more silly than that ? And the fact that exposure of the whole corruption hinges on the testimony of some obscure watchman ( Naseeruddin ) of a building is something that is unconvincing . Kumud Mishra the corrupt armyman looks like a buffoon rather than a villain and Adil Hussein's character looks like from Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible series of movies . Vikram Gokhale does look convincing as the upright army chief however .

The only thing that is believable about the movie is a media desperate for TRPs . But it will take a lot more than that for a film to impress me .

Verdict---Not impressed .

Two stars out of five .
 

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