Udta Teer Review | Ayushmann Khurrana’s Film Makes Light Of An Identity Crisis

There is an interesting question buried somewhere in Udta Teer: what makes a person loyal to their country? Is it the circumstances of their birth, their upbringing and the values they are taught, or the people they love and the lives they lead? Could an ordinary Indian and an ordinary Pakistani have more in common through their personal struggles than their national identities allow them to acknowledge? Akash A Kaushik's spy comedy has the ingredients to explore these questions. Unfortunately, it often seems more interested in turning serious political tensions into punchlines than examining what they mean.

The film stars Ayushmann Khurrana as Bilal Ahmed, a Pakistani intelligence agent who loses his memory after a confrontation with Indian counter-intelligence. He wakes up believing he is an Indian patriot and finds himself working against the very people he was trained to serve. Sara Ali Khan plays his wife, with their marriage already on the verge of divorce. The premise borrows from the familiar secret agent with amnesia trope, popularised by stories such as Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne series. The challenge is to make this familiar set-up feel relevant to the world the film inhabits. Udta Teer rarely manages that.

The film moves at a furious pace. One development follows another, leaving little room for the characters or the audience to process what has happened. Bilal's backstory involves parents who were Pakistani spies and died in India during crossfire involving the police. He was trained for military operations from a young age, and his identity is shaped by the world he was raised in. Yet the film's handling of his past feels more like a collection of convenient plot points than a convincing explanation of how a person comes to understand loyalty.

The question of what makes Bilal convincingly Indian is particularly awkward. His performance of Hindu identity, including the film's repeated use of religious markers, is treated as a way to establish his place in India. But can a person's national allegiance really be reduced to the symbols they adopt or the prayers they recite? The film does not seem interested in asking. The film’s repeated invocation of Vande Mataram and Jai Hind underlines its emphasis on patriotism, while the use of Jai Shri Ram occasionally hints at saffronised messaging. However, the film does maintain a balance for the most part, even if certain moments feel heavy-handed in their attempt to establish national identity.

This is where the comedy becomes difficult to defend. Udta Teer takes subjects such as jihad, terrorism and an attack in Ayodhya and places them within a broad comic framework. Comedy can be an effective way to question nationalism, expose political absurdities and challenge the language used to justify violence. But the jokes here often feel too blunt to do any of that. Instead of offering a fresh perspective on the issues it raises, the film reduces them to exaggerated situations and easy targets. The result is not necessarily irreverent; at times, it feels insulting.

The same problem extends to the film's depiction of geopolitics. A Pakistani general's fear of the presence of Chinese officials is played in a manner that feels almost textbook, as if the film is ticking off familiar geopolitical references rather than building a credible world. Its treatment of intelligence operations and cross-border infiltration raises questions it has little interest in answering. How plausible is the world it presents? How many assumptions about national identity and military service does it expect the audience to accept without question? The film's pace keeps moving before these questions can settle.

Khurrana is at the centre of this chaos, switching between Bilal’s trained instincts and the patriotic identity he comes to believe in. His comic timing gives the film some momentum, but the character’s sudden expressions of desh bhakti are often so exaggerated that they become the joke rather than the starting point for one. The performance is required to carry a character whose internal conflict is far more interesting than the script allows him to be.

Sara Ali Khan, as Bilal’s estranged wife, is caught in a narrative that has more interest in its spy machinery than in the relationship at its centre. Her character’s discovery of Bilal’s real identity could have added an emotional dimension to the film’s questions about trust, loyalty and the difference between the person we know and the person they have been trained to become. Instead, the relationship struggles to gain weight amid the constant succession of plot developments.

Ram Kapoor does a good job as Niyazi, bringing a sense of authority and conviction to the character. He understands the tone of the film and gives the role a distinct presence without making his performance feel unnecessarily theatrical. Even when the writing leans on familiar political tropes, Kapoor keeps Niyazi grounded enough to hold the audience’s attention.

What works in Kapoor’s favour is his ability to make Niyazi feel like a person within the film’s otherwise exaggerated world. He brings the kind of screen presence that comes from experience, making his scenes engaging even when the screenplay moves too quickly to give the character much depth. Kapoor is among the cast members who make the material work better than it does on paper.

Rahul Bose, meanwhile, plays a significant role in Bilal's capture and the events that lead to his memory loss. The film takes an increasingly absurd turn in the second half, including a development that leaves Bose's character in a vegetative state. The supporting cast includes Suhail Nayyar, Gulshan Grover, Mukul Dev, Raghubir Yadav, Brijendra Kala and Supriya Pilgaonkar, among others. There is considerable experience in this ensemble, but the writing rarely gives its actors enough space to build characters beyond their immediate functions in the plot.

The technical choices are similarly uneven. Sachin–Jigar's music is used generously, sometimes to the point where it feels as if the film is determined to extract maximum mileage from every cue. At 137 minutes, Udta Teer is packed with action, comedy and patriotic declarations, but speed is not the same as rhythm. Its constant movement prevents the story from developing the tension or emotional clarity that a spy comedy of this scale needs.

The tragedy is that Udta Teer has a question worth asking at its centre. National identity is inherited, taught and performed, but it is also shaped by relationships, memory and lived experience. What happens when those things come into conflict? Could someone discover a shared humanity across a border without abandoning the complicated loyalties that define them? These are not small questions, and a comedy need not answer them solemnly to take them seriously.

Instead, Udta Teer repeatedly reaches for the easiest joke or the loudest patriotic gesture. It has the outline of a film about how national loyalty is constructed, but little patience for examining that construction. What could have been a provocative spy comedy becomes a noisy collection of political references and comic set-pieces. The result is a film that asks a worthwhile question but does not stay with it long enough to understand what it means.