Movie Review - Naam Shabana by Suhel Johar

Naam Shabana Fails To Impress Due To An Incongruous Script.

Naam Shabana is a spin-off from the 2015 film Baby with Taapsee Pannu reprising her role as Shabana. The concept of spinoffs is a novel one in Bollywood which the makers of Baby are trying with Naam Shabana. The main protagonist of Baby, Akshay Kumar, is seen in an extended cameo. Other cast includes Manoj Bajpayee, Anupam Kher and Prithviraj Sukumaran in supporting roles in the film. The film has also been dubbed into Tamil and Telugu languages.

Director Shivam Nair, who last tried the thriller genre in his 2015 disastrous outing, Bhaag Johnny, has explored another not so edgy thriller in the form of Naam Shabana. Baby director Neeraj Pandey has penned the screenplay and serves as a creative consultant.

Naam Shabana opens in Vienna, Austria with the broad daylight murders of two secret agents from India. Cut to Mumbai, Maharashtra, we are introduced to Shabana Khan (Taapsee Pannu), a SYBCom student whose life revolves around her mother (Natasha Rastogi) and Kudo training. She is a headstrong girl who doesn't wear her emotions on the sleeves and pretends to ignore the feelings of her classmate Jai (Taheer Shabbir) who is head over heels in love with her but never really expresses it. Upon Jai's insistence, Shabana reveals murky details of her past as the reason for her bitterness.  Jai promises to stand by her and that melts Shabana's stone-cold heart. Unfortunately, their yet-to-begin love tale is cut short when Shabana falls prey to eve-teasing and Jai gets killed in the bargain.

An undercover agent Manoj Bajpayee contacts Shabana, he wants to induct her into their organization in exchange for offering her help to eliminate Jai's killers. Soon, she completes her vendetta saga and is sent off to Malaysia on her first secret official mission.

The secret mission is to expose and kill a global arms kingpin Tony/ Mikhail (Prithiviraj Sukumaran), who also deals in human trafficking and money laundering across the globe. Akshay Kumar and Anupam Kher help Shabana in planting her around Tony. Will Shabana repay Manoj Bajpayee by killing Tony?

Known for making content driven films like A Wednesday and Baby, Naam Shabana is a big letdown from producer-writer Neeraj Pandey. The biggest problem of the film is its plot or the lack of it. Poor writing – incoherent script, lack of detailing and lacklustre dialogues are the main culprits here. First half is dull and such a drag that you have to fight yourself from going to sleep. The second half begins on a better note but soon fizzles out as it becomes trite and so predictable.

Naam Shabana is like two movies rolled into one.  Both the halves of the film follow an independent pattern. 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 ignored the events of the first half, and even sideline to some extent, Shabana herself. Akshay Kumar, who is in an extended cameo, gets to do a lot more than he should be doing. In fact, his presence undermines the relevance of Shabana’s character and distracts the audience from the actual protagonist. Which makes us wonder why send a novice like Shabana on such an important mission, when Rajput was enough. Shabana and Rajput’s partnership is not fleshed out well. This leads to our next – why were Ranveer and his team using their resources to stalk Shabana so much, that it starts disturbing you? Also, why was India’s secret service helping a candidate in her revenge killing that they even sent their best officer to help her? They never even bothered to stop her boyfriend from getting killed, when they could have. The screenplay is so lopsided and full of loopholes.

Shivam Nair fails to cover up the loopholes in the script which play a spoilsport.  His execution and narrative at best can be described as inept.

The final nail is the incessant, annoying background music. It blares non-stop and makes this film even longer than it is. The songs composed by Rochak Kohli and Meet Bros in the film are no better. None of the songs stay with you after the end-credits roll. In fact, they hinder the narrative and only add minutes to the film.

Sudheer Pansare's cinematography is good. Editing by Kathikuloth Praveen needed to be crisper to make the film more engaging and thrilling.

Performancewise, Taapsee Pannu despite the incongruity in the way her character has been etched out she performs to the best of abilities and rises above the script. She is the only bright spot in the film. Manoj Bajpayee stands out in his strict undercover agent act. Prithiviraj suffers from ridiculously written part. He seems mechanical and unintentionally funny in a few scenes. Akshay Kumar's extended cameo completely falls flat as it looks forced. You see him randomly popping up in scenes that make no sense. He is there to provide comic relief but does he?

The rest of the cast, which includes Tahir Shabbir, Natasha Rastogi,  Madhurima Tuli, Murli Sharma,   Anupam Kher, Manav Vij and Zakir Hussain do an okay job. Elli Avram and Shibani Dandekar have nothing to do.  

On the whole, Naam Shabana highlights the issues of self-defence and women safety but the script makes a mishmash of these issues.