Movie Review: Naam Shabana , Bollywood’s Prequel
Movie Review: Bollywood Film ‘Naam Shabana’
Rating: 2/5
Director: Shivam Nair
Cast: Taapsee Pannu, Akshay Kumar, Anupam Kher, Manoj Bajpayee
Naam Shabana, touted as Bollywood’s first spinoff and is the prequel of the 2015 hit ‘Baby’.
The film’s director Neeraj Pandey passes the baton to Shivam Nair for the spinoff. While Neeraj has written the story, he hasn’t directed the film.
Baby was one of the most loved Bollywood movies in 2015. Althought a small one, Taappsee’s role left the audience wanting to see more of her characte action which welcomed the idea of her having a solo movie. It also helps that Taapsee is a fine actress and holds the film, well most of it, on her slender but strong shoulders. She shines in the action sequences, but there is also a scene where she retells her dark past where we get to see her emotional side.
Akshay Kumar continues his fine form with dry humor and terrific body language. Dialogues in the film from Kumar and Bajpayee are witty and aim to please the frontbenchers. Naam Shabana is a film where the second half fares better than the first. There are far more engaging scenes, especially towards the latter part of the movie. The hand to hand action combat is done well, though it needed a little more conviction. The Baby references also work well, most of the times, especially when Anupam Kher makes his entry.
Neeraj seems to be toying between two genres here: revenge and a spy thriller. While the revenge part is meted out in typical Bollywood style, he resorts to his own style when handling the thriller. Naam Shabana is like two movies rolled into one. While the first half shows how Shabana gets into the secret service program, the second half focuses on the mission in Malaysia.
This could not have been a bad thing if the second half hadn’t completely alienated the events of the first half, and even ignoring to some extent, Shabana herself. Akshay Kumar, who was supposed to be just a cameo, gets to do a lot more than ‘bahut door se aaya hoon, kuch toh karne do.’ In fact, his presence actually overstays its welcome, distracting the audience from the actual protagonist.
Taapsee looks powerful and dangerous in the action sequences, thanks to Cyrill Raffaeli and Abbas Ali Moghul, the action directors. However, she seems to be quite uncomfortable in the scenes that require her to emote. She is very unconvincing as the woman who keeps her emotions bottled up but is extremely passionate in reality.
With her part and back story, Shabana has every right to be cynical and this could have been a very interesting addition to the narrative. However, the dialogues are too vague and turn out to be bordering on being foolishly annoying.
Another annoying element in the film is the way it projects its feminism—it looks like Jai Mata Di version of hailing females, where you do not allow the women to take the centrestage but put her on a pedestal and call her the saviour nonetheless.
Both Akshay and Manoj keep telling people around them that she is the one who is doing everything while they continue dictating what is to be done and even keep her away from what they perceive men’s zone—like the man who “protects” his wife from every bad situation and later says, “Mata rani ki kripa se bach gae”.
One of the final fight sequences suddenly turns hilarious when Akshay and his opponent start a strip tease right before getting into their scuffle—almost in Salman Khan style. You know, the way he pauses and gives that “l know you are waiting for this” look to the camera.
The support cast, Danny Denzongpa, Manoj Bajpayee and Anupam Kher are good in their roles but the script does not allow them to help raise the film to a respectable level.
Watch Naam Shabana purely for Taapsee Pannu’s fine performance and Akshay Kumar’s enjoyable cameo, and also if you loved Baby too much. Just don’t go into theater expecting another quality stuff like Baby, even if the movie forces us to draw comparisons.
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