Nikhil's latest flick deals with a secret operation carried out by RAW to catch a terrorist residing in the Middle East.
'Spy'. (Actor Nikhil/ Twitter)
Spy (Telugu)
How accurate are the espionage films while depicting reality? Do they mean gun-toting heroes taking down dreaded terrorists and accomplishing high-octane missions and gun battles make for compelling stories?
How important is it for a film to bring that art while narrating a story that has national importance?
Nikhil Siddharth’s latest release Spy hit the screens amidst high expectations. The actor now weighs big at the box office, thanks to his pan-Indian fick Karthikeya 2 (2022) that had set the cash registers ringing.
‘Spy’ is an action thriller. (Actor Nikhil/ Twitter)
Jay (Nikhil Siddhartha) is a Research Analysis Wing (RAW) agent who returns to India after completing a secret operation in Galle, Sri Lanka.
His elder sibling Subash Vardhan (Aryan Rajesh), also an agent working for National Investigative Agency (NIA), successfully guns down a dreaded terrorist Khadir Khan — who was on RAW’s hit list — in Jordan.
But unfortunately, Subash gets killed in the operation. While Subash’s death is shrouded in mystery, it also leaves Jay and his parents shattered.
The latter half of Spy explores how this dreaded terrorist rears his ugly head in the form of nuclear scientist Abdul Rehman to give an irrecoverable blow to India.
How do Jay and his team thwart the supposed threat to the nation while discovering the mystery of his brother’s death? And how did the best-kept secrets of freedom fighter Subash Chandra Bose go missing? — form the story.
Nikhil Siddhartha ‘Spy’. (Actor Nikhil/ Twitter)
The story of Spy basically deals with a secret operation carried out by RAW agents to catch a terrorist residing in the Middle East who poses a severe threat to India’s security.
The film boasts big on paper with all the material that an international espionage thriller needs. But director Garry BH falters while executing it on the screen.
You see just guns and an exchange of fire from both ends. Of course, there is a backstory popping up for almost every episode before you realise it has a connection with it.
Jay, along with his deputy (played by Abhinav Gomatam), lands in Nepal’s Kathmandu on a mission. The song that is played in the background while they’re in a cab makes the protagonist tense. It brings back the memories of the past.
The backstory tells a seemingly innocent and conservative girl (played by Iswarya Menon) flattering him with her looks. And Jay, being a RAW agent, couldn’t realise that he was being honey-trapped by the girl.
Abhinav Gomatam’s character, a RAW deputy under Jay, takes instructions from the latter. His single one-liners may seem unintentional puns in a few scenes, evoking laughter in the hall.
But you may feel such farce comedy would take away the seriousness of the drama. “ANR nundi Arjun Reddy varaku okkate expression ah? (Do we have the same expression from ANR to Arjun Reddy?)” he says when Jay emotionally warns Iswarya that he doesn’t want to work with people who break his trust.
Nikhil and Iswarya Menon in ‘Spy’. (Actor Nikhil/ Twitter)
Rana Daggubati’s cameo appearance in the second half of Spy draws whistles among the crowd when viewers wanted to know what the protagonist would do after landing in Kohima.
Rana gives a premise of what importance Kohima has in the chapter on India’s struggle for Independence and how Subash Chandra Bose utilised it in raising an army of soldiers from Azad Hind Fauj.
Well, as an audience, it may trigger a variety of stimuli inside you while listening to the untold stories of bygone days from pre-Independence times. But then, you may also wonder how come the characters (RAW agents) are not aware of the “Battle of Kohima”?
And then, this protagonist tries his hand at making a tear gas to break into a building along with his team.
The chemical weapon, made from water and a mixture of petrol, is injected through an air compressor and it eventually makes the armed men unconscious inside the building. At that moment, you may hear someone in the hall shout, “Hey, it’s laughing gas!”
Nikhil invested his sweat and blood into Spy, as he claimed. The performance is appreciable in parts.
Rather than carrying it smoothly, Nikhil’s “chocolate boy” image is overburdened by this James Bond-kind look in the film.
Iswarya Menon is okayish as a RAW official.
Makarand Deshpande’s character as RAW chief has little impact.
Garry BH and Nikhil Siddhartha on the sets of ‘Spy’. (Supplied)
Mark David’s cinematography and Sricharan Pakala-Vishal Chadrashekar’s music deserve praise in this not-so-thrilling espionage drama.
Garry BH’s style of moviemaking has many inadequacies because the guns and action sequences don’t make the story appealing to audiences.
In the film, very little is said about Subash Chandra Bose and his alleged death in a plane crash. It would have been a different twist to the story in the second half had the director thrown more light on what happened to Bose and why this statesman’s story remained an enigma for the nation.
Watch Spy for Nikhil’s moments of becoming an action hero and Abhinav Gomatam’s comedy. But it’s a strict no-no for those who love suspense, mystery and espionage stories.
(Views expressed here are personal.)
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