Spy(Telugu, Prime Video)
Rating: *
When this weirdly-warped espionage thriller, Salman Khan’s Tiger gone West then South, opened in movie theatres a month ago, it got a decent response.
But the initial hurrah turned into a massive groan . By the time Spy has hit the digital domain, it feels like an ordeal by fire for the audience.
Cars blow up, men and women jump and slide down steep buildings , and dangerous looking guns are fired, mostly at our enemies in Pakistan. But it all amounts to a whole lot of clumsily written screenplay with no hope of redemption even towards the climax where more fists and bullets fly,more enemies are wasted, and so is our time.
There is no way of softening the blow. So let’s just say, Spy is the arguably the worst espionage film ever . The screenplay(by Annirudh Krishnamurthy) is more of a scream-play. It tries to cram in many twists spread into many countries , but it can’t even seem to get Nepal right. The hilly country is fake-created,presumably in some corner of Andhra Pradesh.
The action scenes….well, let’s just say Tom Cruise and Salman Khan have nothing to feel threatened about. The villains are chased down what looks like roads under repair .The cars,which have seen better days,blow up with clumsy CGs for support.
Spy seems to take its RAW plot too seriously. The endproduct looks like a rough cut of a film school’s monthly examination with amateurs acting like professionals. Nikhil Siddharth as Jai the lead player falls way short of requirement. His screen presence is far from impressive.He is mediocre doing stunts and his performance in the emotional scenes leaves much to be desired. The actor Abhinav Gomatam who plays his ally in the endeavour to save the world(who will save then world from such embarrassing films?) is neither funny nor wise. He is simply as bland as this film permits him to be . The third protagonist Vaishnavi (Iswarya Menon) is a double agent: she is a RAW agent and she doubles up as Jai’s off and on love interest. Ms Menon needed a crash course in the art of seduction and stocktaking.
Midway , Jisshu Sengupta shows up as a disgraced Pakistani scientist. This , after prolonged bouts of shooting and chasing down blind alleys and deadends.
Spy is an atrocious work of lazy excitable filmmaking with zero imagination and substandard performances. Why was it made in the first place?
