Agent Vinod

Starring: Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Adil Hussain, Dhritiman Chatterjee, Shahbaz Khan, Ram Kapoor
Directed by Sriram Raghavan
Rating: **

There is an incredible urge to run a fine comb through Agent Vinod, to straighten the several strands, trajectories, characters, locations that end up as one big clutter in the mind’s eye. The tale of the Indian spy Vinod (Saif), running from Afghanistan to Russia to Pakistan through Morocco, Sri Lanka, UK and Latvia, to prevent a nuclear operation in India, attempts to do a bit too much in its extended, almost three-hour long duration. As a result, some individual sequences and set-pieces may stand out (watch out for the song Raabta and a jump of scene from Tangiers to Trincomalee) but never manage to come together well as an engaging narrative. Instead of an unquestioning absorption, the thriller leaves one feeling curiously detached, distanced, often utterly befuddled. Where did Tehmur Pasha come from? And where did he go? Does it matter?

A quote from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly sets the agenda: one name, nothing is as it seems, all is deception. There are several other references to movies, film songs, pop culture and real-life personalities strewn all over the film. From Boney M’s Rasputin to Aasmaan pe hai khuda. From Chaplin, Bud Spencer, Vinod Khanna to nuclear scientist Andrei Sakharov and filmmaker Paresh Kamdar. Dense with meaning, did we say?

There is a throwaway rakishness to the agent and his smart one-liners, which makes one think Bond but one glimpse of the RAW team headed by none other than B.P. Singh, the director of CID, also evokes the tacky elements of the popular TV serial, specially towards the film’s climax. Take the villains. They range from the caricatured individuals who cry over their ailing camels and torture with strange injections to those who hatch some serious diplomatic and political conspiracy theories. This variation in tone and tenor makes things jarring; perhaps it would have been easier to grapple with the film if it had it stuck to one thing—farce or fact.

For me it would have worked better as a cheeky farce. Anyway, when it comes to handling “facts”, the treatment is facile. They have generously borrowed from newspaper headlines: transfer of dollars through hawala for funding terrorism, how Pakistan and India are both pawns in the larger manipulative game or a character who echoes the acquitted S.A.R. Geelani and the recently arrested journo, Syed Kazmi. But the treatment has no more depth than Sunny Deol’s Hero: The Love Story of A Spy, only Agent Vinod is better dressed up.

At almost the fag end, I connected most with two Delhi aunties hitching an auto ride in the thick of impending terror. Wish the film had been as genuinely inspired as the two of them.