Ulajh Review: Janhvi Kapoor Holds Her Own And Sails Through The Film

The fate of the female protagonist in Ulajh, an espionage thriller directed and co-written by Sudarshan Saria, is not too unlike the film's plot. It is a tangle that goes from bad to worse. It is difficult at times to fathom what on earth is going on with and around the lady, and in the film, until a lot of murky water is under the bridge and everything is in grave danger of being drowned.

A degree of obfuscation may not be out of place in a movie that is dependent on mystery, intrigue and red herrings for effect but the film's struggle for clarity and pace is never-ending as the diplomat-heroine, caught in a career-threatening bind in London, fights corporate blackmail and an assassination conspiracy.

Ulajh juggles a whole array of tricks and twists to ramp up tension but it never quite succeeds in blowing away the cobwebs of cliches that it gathers along the way. It is never absorbing enough to keep the audience invested in the details and dynamics of the protagonist's predicament as she is painted into a corner by a wily adversary.

Ulajh, produced by Junglee Pictures and starring Janhvi Kapoor in a role that is physically challenging but limited in its emotional bandwidth, isn't, however, completely devoid of noteworthy elements. The principal one pertains to what the young woman that the film revolves around brings to the table.

Suhana Bhatia, daughter and granddaughter of respected career diplomats, has a great deal to live up to. She isn't a trained, quick-on-the-draw secret agent spoiling for a fight but a white-collar government functionary committed to playing by the rules.

Suhana isn't a battle-ready operative in the mould of the RAW undercover agents we encountered in Baby, Naam Shabana and Raazi. She does not swing into action at the slightest provocation. That isn't her job description.

Given the field that she is in, Suhana is surrounded by men from the diplomatic corps and the ranks of the secret service agency. Not only is she the sole woman in the Indian high commission in London, she is also the Number 2 in the hierarchy, a position that a few of the men she works with feel she does not deserve.

Suhana has to fend off deadly foes, untrustworthy allies and snarky men envious of her meteoric rise in the Indian foreign service. She has to dig deep into her reserves of resilience and enlist the help of others to tide over the crisis that she faces.

Suhana's appointment as India's deputy high commissioner in London is received with scepticism, if not outright derision. She is determined to prove the doubters wrong. She is confident that she has it in her to carry the family legacy forward with distinction.

One wrong step triggers a chain of disconcerting events. Even as her father (Adil Hussain) is named India's permanent representative at the United Nations Suhana falls prey to a conspiracy owing to an impulsive dalliance she is drawn into following a high-profile embassy event where a crucial defence deal is proposed.

She finds her career under a cloud. Her father's reputation, too, is in danger of being dented. A man about town she befriends (Gulshan Devaiah), a couple of RAW agents in the Indian high commission - Sevin Kutty (Roshan Mathew) and Jacob Tamang (Meiyang Chang) - and her official chauffeur, Salem Sayeed (Rajesh Tailang), aggravate the situation.

When Suhana is gripped by negative thoughts, a phone call from her dad pulls her back from the precipice - literally so. An entire scene is devoted to capturing the fragile state of her mind and the precise moment when she returns from the brink. As for the film itself, the free fall never stops.

Ulajh is songless (barring a qawwali in a dargah in the film's climactic sequence). But can a Bollywood spy thriller do without Pakistan, especially without terrorists suspected to be harboured there? But, for all the hackneyed devices that the film wallows in, Ulajh dares to depart from the norm in a few significant ways.

Suhana's tormentor states that the notions of gaddari (treachery) and wafadari (loyalty/patriotism) are traps laid by capitalists and that national boundaries are only lines drawn on sand. Not that Ulajh centres on that assertion, but these are ideas that do not usually make their way into Bollywood actioners.

Ulajh is about spies and conspirators who want to scuttle peace efforts between two neighbouring nations but it is neither strident of tone nor jingoistic in spirit. The nation is invoked a few times but the battle that the protagonist wages is as much about family as about nation, as much about personal ideals as about the tricolour.

That apart, not only do the bad guys that Suhana has to contend with come from both sides of the border, Pakistan is also shown as making pacifist overtures by offering to hand over to India a bomb blast accused.

The Indian foreign minister (Rajendra Gupta) plays host to a Pakistan premier (Rushad Rana) - but there is more to the bonhomie than meets the eye. The visiting dignitary's life is under threat - a secret that Suhana stumbles upon as she ferrets around for clues and ends up in New Delhi looking for the man manipulating her.

Janhvi Kapoor is the lynchpin. She is called upon to pull off a role that is demanding not as much for what it entails as for its sustained centrality to the film. Ulajh isn't a breeze for her but she holds her own and sails through it without being overly weighed down.

Her key co-actors - Gulshan Devaiah, Roshan Mathew, Adil Hussain and Rajesh Tailang - are screen performers of proven quality. They get into the skin of their roles without much ado. Meiyang Chang, too, has an important, if abbreviated, role and he does justice to it.

Ulajh isn't exactly a washout. A little more vitality and veracity might have done it a world of good and helped it become what it had the potential to be - a spy drama with a difference.