Code Name Tiranga Review: Parineeti Chopra's Spy Thriller Is All Smoke No Fire

Cast: Parineeti Chopra, Harrdy Sandhu, Sharad Kelkar, Rajit Kapur, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Shishir Sharma, Sabyasachi Chakraborty and Deesh Mariwala

Director: Ribhu Dasgupta

Rating: One and a half stars (out of 5)

Faced with an especially challenging undercover mission aimed at taking out a terrorist hiding somewhere in Turkey, the Indian spy agency chief asserts that "we need our best man for the job". Turns out that "the best man for the job" is a woman, an elite secret agent with a track record to die for.

The gender twist at the heart of the Code Name Tiranga narrative is about the only facet of the movie that merits any serious attention. The rest of the blustery but sputtering spy thriller, for all its pyrotechnics, is all smoke and no fire.

Code Name Tiranga, directed by Ribhu Dasgupta, is a series of yawn-inducing gunfights interspersed with fleeting sequences in which the characters are given lines to speak. They deliver the banalities with all the zeal that they can muster before plunging with equal enthusiasm into the next action scene in which firearms and grenades do all the talking.

In an espionage thriller in which meaningful conversations and genuine dramatic moments are accorded secondary status, the heroine, after the globe-trotting hurly-burly is out of the way, makes light of a personal tragedy she has suffered because it for a patriotic spy it is nation first. Always.

She turns to the audience and asserts that her fight was not only to protect the country from harm but also to deliver a blow on behalf of all women. The undercover agent does not stop there. Every time the tiranga is in danger of being trifled with, a Durga - her name is Durga Singh and she is a Special Ops officer - will appear and eliminate the enemy, she adds.

This laboured sequence comes on the heels of a major showdown with the villain in which the infallible lady wields an automatic weapon to gun down the henchmen who guard the hideout but fall like nine pins as a remixed version of Vande Mataram blares away on the soundtrack. In her final assault on the terrorist, Durga Singh discards the gun and wields a knife. She, like the film, has run out of ammunition.

The man that Durga Singh (Parineeta Chopra, who collaborated with Ribhu Dasgupta on last year's just-as-forgettable The Girl On The Train) has been deployed to smoke out is a key suspect in the 2001 Parliament attack (Bollywood's favourite flashpoint) - Khalid Omar (Sharad Kelkar, whose voice does its bit to offset the vacuity of the lines he spouts).

Durga Singh is a superspy in the classic mould - she is a sharpshooter, a hand-to-hand combat expert who no man can match, a highly skilled intelligence gatherer and, above all, a survivor blessed with uncanny bullet-dodging ability.

The first time we see and hear her, she is in bad physical shape having emerged from a violent skirmish that has left her bloodied. In an introductory voiceover, she says something about snatching life from the jaws of death. This sets the stage for what is to come.

Cut to a man who hails a taxi in Kabul. Durga jumps into the vehicle without so much as a by your leave. The surprised male passenger introduces himself as Dr. Mirza Ali (Harrdy Sandhu). The two converse first in Pashto, then in English and finally in Hindi. I am a half-Punjabi Turkish citizen, the man reveals.

Durga, in an abaya, says her name is Ismat and she is running away from a family that wants her to get married against her will. I do not like Punjabi men, she adds for effect. The doctor takes the barb in his stride. The next thing we know is that they are a couple.

Durga's real motive is revealed at a wedding that she attends in the company of Mirza with a plan to trap and kill a deadly terrorist. The mission fails. The Indian intelligence establishment sets another operation in motion and "the best man for the job" is pressed into service. Not that there are no men around the intrepid Durga Singh. Ajay Bakshi (Dibyendu Bhattacharya), a spy who his bosses believe has gone rogue and can no longer be trusted, pops up at regular intervals. Kabir Ali (Rajit Kapur), India's man for all seasons in the Middle East, is at hand to troubleshoot when danger lurks.

Code Name Tiranga isn't about jung (war) alone. The film also has a substantial strand that hinges on pyaar (love). It involves the relationship between the heroine and Mirza, a UN functionary who returns to Turkey after completing his Kabul stint. Predictably, Durga and Mirza meet again but in altered circumstances.

Durga has two battles on her hands - one to prove her loyalty to the nation, the other to ensure that she does not lose the man she loves. But can she win on both fronts? That is the question Code Name Tiranga answers in the second half. The methods it employs are anything but gripping.

Halfway through the film, the intelligence agent ends up in the good doctor's clinic with bullet wounds. She is apologetic about the way she ditched him in Kabul. "Goli mujhe pehli baar nahi lagi hai par pehli baar dard ho raha hai." That is the effect love has had on the otherwise steely Durga Singh.

The agony of losing the love of her life overshadows the pain caused by two bullets that pierce her during a solo raid on a terrorist's secret, heavily-guarded abode somewhere near the Turkey-Syria border.

In a film that is literally all over the place, the actors have their jobs cut out. They struggle to rise above the deafening din and be heard and understood. The script, credited to a quartet of writers that includes the director, rides on the most hackneyed of action movie conventions, leaving way too much for the cast to salvage.

Code Name Tiranga gives Parineeti Chopra a role clearly outside her comfort zone. Her mission isn't exactly impossible, but she isn't an Atomic Blonde either. With a screenplay that is more action than talk, Chopra hits her straps only intermittently.

Harrdy Sandhu, in the guise of a self-effacing, mild-mannered man, may seem like an ideal foil to a girl of incessant action but he is hamstrung by sketchy characterisation. As for the other actors in the cast, Code Name Tiranga will certainly not go down as a memorable outing. The film waves a flag that flaps and flutters without much purpose.