AGENT VINOD: MOVIE REVIEW

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Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Prem Chopra, Adil Hussain,Dhritiman ChaterjiDirector: Sriram RaghavanRuntime: 156 min. Verdict: A smart smart uber-stylish film that could’ve easily beenso much more. Andit comes with a killer title sequence.Genre: Thriller, Action                                                                
                You couldbe charitable and give Mr. Raghavan the benefit of the doubt by ignoring the snatch-and-grab(do read all the links) action sequences as an attempt to hide theirweaknesses, or you could be critical of the choppy barely-comprehensible filmmaking,where the geography doesn’t make a lick of sense, where close scrutiny of thosefragmentary moments betray cars ambling along in a chase who kinetic energy isbarely an illusion. Mr. Raghavan, in his turn, replies with a most beautifullyconstructed corridor-setpiece, and coming on the heels of the film’s mostromantic moment – her confession a tad clichéd and his probably as bittersweet(blunt and honest) a reflection anyone as opaque as him could muster courage togive away – the poetry of their relationship’s conception amidst all theviolence and danger, and the resulting shootout, where the smooth thuds ofsilencers from his gun give way to a camouflaging hug that turns out to besomething real for her, might cause John Woo to shed a tear or two. There’s ablind woman, and another with a tiny baby, and you’re laughing too. I was. Sowas my wife. At the sheer joy of it all. There was a song playing in thebackground that felt sweet and sad and happy and breathless at the same time,and in keeping with my density with anything that is in verse-form, it might aswell have been in Swahili. I listen to it now, with that sequence playing andreplaying itself in the background, with both hindsight (plot) and meaning(song) at my disposal, and I realize Mr. Raghavan didn’t even need words there.That is music action-style, or if you want to put it the other way round, it isaction music-style. And aside from the fact that it is both, it is pure.                 Unlike themelodrama of the ending, which is fake any which way you look at it. A clearand present problem in our urban/global action movie that needs immediateattention is the general dose of English in our dialogs, which just doesn’tsound right. I cannot at the moment put my finger on it, but stuff like “I can’t make it” or “Why can’t we diffuse the bomb” or “that bastard shot me” simply meltsbefore the bullshit detector, and pulls you out of the proceedings. The dramafeels tacked on, the stakes with the bomb and all feels unnecessarily high,almost a part of a different film, and the Inver Brass-esque ending, with itssummarization of the scenario around the subcontinent feels like anadvertisement for The Hindu. From a plot involving colorful cinematic utterlyfictional characters, we’re suddenly in the firing line of such cool-soundingthings as “Beijing stock market crash” and “Iran-India pipeline” and “civilwar” and “senators” and “NATO”. In a way, it is an implication of everyadolescent reader like me who actually took those scenarios in Robert Ludlum’snovels seriously. Knowledge sometimes can be a very bad thing.                 But then,Mr. Ludlum’s novels had the luxury of packing that lethargic prose andconvoluted plot into incredibly bloated books running anywhere from 500 to 800pages. There’s only so much plot and so many sequences that could go into acommercial length narrative feature. It is just an approximation but by mycount Agent Vinod has close to 50sequences, which is quite a large number for a film of the whoisbehindit andwhyisbehindit kind, where cause and effect ought to be clearly explained to theaudience so that they gain some sort of foothold on the proceedings. Thekeywords here are goals and obstacles,and in an out-and-out post-modernist thriller as Agent Vinod, where the dramatic tensions are near negligible whencompared to the “larger” scheme of things, which in turn are forsaken for somenudges here and winks there and a general level of we’re-having-a-ball-making-thisattitude (which sometimes is infectious), the audience’s understanding ofG&O attains considerable significance as far as their interaction with itis concerned. Interaction is another keyword. I mean, you don’t causeinteraction you might as well show the grass grow, no? Consider Mr. De Palma’s Mission Impossible, a film whichreceived much flak from the critical fraternity for its convoluted plot, butone that is an ideal example here – the kind that creates a perfect illusion ofinvolvement, the kind that feelscoherent in spite of unleashing excessive amount of exposition within a shortspan of time, that kind that creates willingly dumb terminals with a falsesense of interaction with its long setpieces threading together the narrative. Betweenthe Hitchcockian pleasures of the mission in Prague, to the Rififi-inspired CIA NOC-list theft, tothe CGI-awesomeness of the train chase, the film unloads upon us a whole lot ofcockamamie masquerading as plot. These are interim goals the narrative leadsto, and we are under the totally false impression that we’re engaging with thedidactic narrative when we’re merely following it.Agent Vinod has little by way of these clearly set goals. Neither are theyproperly set-up as a big event (narrative pit-stop), nor are they anticipatedin advance. It is not modeled on the heist movie pattern of the Mission Impossible movies films butinstead follows the hooking strategy of the adventure film ((in a way, all Bondmovies could be classified under here, as far as I can recollect), whereeverything is unknown, and breadcrumbs lead the way through the narrative. Andalthough Mr. Raghavan sets his narrative far more intelligently than most ofthe Bond films, there is little to no respite from this incessant trail (plot).Respite here refers to a strategically placed action sequence (unlike theobligatory ones in most Bond films that only serve to aggravate the detachment)where the dramatic stakes take over the narrative stakes, like for instanceamping up the matter of Kazan’s death or Ruby’s (Ms. Kapoor) predicament, wherewe care for something other than the smartness of everyone around. You couldsay the film is too clever for its own good. But an absence of such a delimiter is not the main concern, andis in no way the deal-breaker. Now, 242 is the perfect hook for an adventurethriller (the Ark) Mr. Raghavan has at his disposal, but he never ever sets itsstatus as the object we desire. We already know about the existence of thenuclear bomb, which is a clear mistake if you ask me, a decision thatsignificantly dilutes the film’s chances of being a thriller and instead adoptthe ways of an action-adventure. As in, a longget-to-the-bomb-before-it-explodes. Which is clearly not Mr. Raghavan’s area ofexpertise, considering he likes his narrative to be littered with crosses anddouble-crosses, and femme fatales, and false identities, and convolutedschemes. And because of the film’s tendencies to deliver punchlines and displaya general degree of cleverness, and because of the incessant pacing both by wayof plotting and cutting (there’s almost a near excessive usage of jump-cutshere, both in action sequences and general camera movements, 242, despite itspresence, rarely gets the top billing. Incessant pacing. I know, first-world problems. With Mr.Raghavan it is not a case of what’s on screen is ineptly done, which happens tobe my gripe with most movies the Hindi film industry serves me. Like Kahaani forinstance, that doesn’t even have theaesthetic sense of cinema. You know, basic stuff that at least makes the damnthing watchable. I mean, here I am complaining about the pacing and amidst allof it Mr. Raghavan gives us probably the most nerve-shattering 20-odd secondsof pure genius in recent memory – a low-angle shot from behind Vinod’s (Mr.Khan) head as the angle of elevation looks at the sniper in the distance. Aschoolbus comes and goes, and for a few moments, where the tension of the time-bombis so unbearable you are on your knees pleading for a cut. It is brilliant,precise and pure. And for sure, it is thing is going to be in my kids’ syllabuswhenever it is they learn movies. Oh yeah baby, they’ve it coming. But then, here in AgentVinod, Mr. Raghavan’s choices seem to be ill-suited to the kind ofnarrative experience he probably was aiming for. Scenes run into each other,and there’s simply too much motion. Mr. Khan walks real fast. It doesn’t helpthat Mr. Raghavan seems to prefer a drum-beating retro-soundtrack.Conversations are generally snappy, and a two-shot, at least for the firsthalf, is a rarity. And when all these are mixed together in an essentiallyexpository narrative, it is probably too much information to take. This begsthe question. Why don’t modern 0action movies employ the dissolve? Mr. Raghavanuses a whole lot of transitory elements, like flying planes, and moving cars,which basically are shorthand for physical displacement, but which make it allseem temporally continuous and a packet of information in its own right. Mymovie-viewing system suggests that nothing is as effective as a good-oldfashioned dissolve, best used in the Indiana Jones movies through those mapscomposited over real action, and cognitively it not merely works as shorthandfor time passing by but has a calming influence on our processing system. Adissolve feels like a logical end-point, and Mr. Raghavan employs it mostly forsome winks (Rajan’s death).  And considering that he gives the nuclear bomb much in advance,wouldn’t he have been better served if he had employed intercutting throughoutthe early part of the narrative, breaking to us not merely the itinerary of thebomb thereby setting the plot up for agent Vinod to unravel, but also droppingon us much in advance the film’s another major hook Bluebird, instead ofbreaking it to us at the eleventh hour when it becomes just another crypticword. And he doesn’t make his job any easier by messing up the narrativethrough cross-cutting during the final half hour of the chase, where everycharacter seems to be following his own trail and the tension that might havebeen derived from the unified goal of following the bomb-man never gains themomentum it should have (Forsyth’s TheFourth Protocol). I mean, the Colonel could’ve been ejected from theproceedings earlier so that it is just the pursuit of the bomb-man we’reconcerned about. The cross-cutting in the initial part, or the lack of it,highlights a far deeper gripe, and one that troubles Srikanth Srinivasan (who made me realize it) themost, is the irony of Vinod’s predicament, both as the agent of the authorityhere and as a symbolical figure of the genre.  The big reveal implies that Vinod has beenunwittingly a part of the Zeus group’s grand conspiracy, aiding them inimplicating the ignorant terrorists. That basically kicks his sense offree-will right out of the window, bringing him and James Bond and every suchfigure right alongside GuyMontag and JohnAnderton and RickDeckard. Which happens to be, or rather could’ve been a brilliant subversionof the spy genre, because Mr. Raghavan discourages any such reading byindulging in his referential-punchline one-two, the ending in South Africabasically echoing Casino Royale. And even in its present state the coda doesn’t sit well with me.I might be significantly dumber than Vinod in Mr. Metla’s eyes, but are wesupposed to be turning the terrorist’s weapons on them? What does that make us,and is Mr. Raghavan implying a ultra right-winging stance? How would the stockexchange fall trigger a NATO attack? Would Beijing remain silent and incapable?Would the United States and its allies be capable of going into another warwith their economic re-collapse? Does Mr. Raghavan’s Agent Vinod encourage this line of questioning? I mean, why doesMr. Arif Zakaria need to be a suicide bomber when he so easily could’ve been asniper? Which is a shame. Because AgentVinod merely ends up being a smart thriller when it could’ve so easily beena great one. Rare is the genre exercise that doesn’t merely announce the plotbut takes great care to be a treat to the eyes. I mean, who would think of quotingTuco of all the people. Or would bother to serve a closeup of dry fingersplaying the organ. Or would employ TheGood The Bad and The Ugly ringtone? Or who would bother to indulge in alittle exercise for the eye, ala the final sequence in Mr. Haneke’s Caché by having the bombman traverse thelength of the frame? Or when we wonder how the hell Vinod knows the Lankantiger, who would take the opportunity of answering it via a pleasing montageserving both as an explanation of the past and present. The thing is there aretwo films there – one a Sriram Raghavan film and the other an Illuminati production.Consider Agent Vinod as Mr. Raghavancoming to terms with the demands of the other one. And when he finds himself onthe other end, I hope the answer he finds has nothing to do with beingfast-paced. Andit probably doesn’t need much of a mention but, Mr. Khan is quite simplydevastating. Could he be the best star-actor we have? I wonder.