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Bollywood Hindi Film Movie Review
Johnson Thomas
Too long drawn to be effective
Film: Operation Romeo
Cast: Bhumika Chawla, Siddhant Gupta, Sharad Kelkar, Vedika Pinto, Kishore Kadam, Navni Parihar
Director: Shashant Shah
Producer: Shital Bhatia, Neeraj Pandey
Writer: Ratheesh Ravi, Arshad Syed
Rating: * * ½
Runtime: 135 mins
The official remake of Anuraj Manohar’s Malayalam film, 'Ishq Not A Love Story, ' and inspired by a true event, Shashant Shah’s ‘Operation Romeo’ has an interesting enough plot that turns on its head post interval but the manner in which it is narrated and presented leaves a lot to be desired. The setting is totally off. Using Mumbai as a backdrop for a story that highlights toxic masculinity while pitting it against evolving feminism, the director and writers fail to make it compelling or meaningful. The issue or theme is not the problem here. The fact that in a city like Mumbai where nightlife is a given, chances of being caught in the high beams of an immoral trafficking police for merely being in a back seat of a stationary car and indulging in a mere peck on the cheek comes across as far-fetched and improbable. Or for that matter having the hero and heroine behave so scared out of their wits that they literally melt at their extortionists’ feet is also quite unlikely.
The narrative construct is interesting enough. What happens when two young timid lovers play hookey from hostel strictures and family responsibility for a celebratory night out drive through the city streets in order to usher in the young heroine’s 19th year? Aditya Sharma aka Adi (Siddhant Gupta) to his friends, is an IT professional in love with a college girl Neha (Vedika Pinto) living in a hostel far away from home state Rajasthan. It’s her birthday and after celebrating with co-eds in college she agrees to an all-night drive with Adi. It’s a sweet set-up so far but the tentative romantic byplay between the two isn’t what the modern urban romantic is expecting. So it comes as an anti-climax when the two are caught pecking by two aggressive men Mangesh Jadhav (Sharad Kelkar) and Kiran Mama (Kishore Kadam) donning the moral police garb, overplaying the good-cop-bad-cop routine and scaring the bejesus out of the two young wannabe lovers. The fact that the two men posing as cops extort quite a large sum of money on the pretext of allowing the young lovers a reprieve is not the issue. The event that turns the screenplay around and pushes the victim to become the aggressor, is the presumption that Mangesh has made good an opportunity to be alone with Neha and force some liberties on her while Adi goes with Kiran to the ATM to withdraw money. It reveals Adi’s regressive mind-set and allows for the hitherto timid heroine’s feminist outing.
While the latter part of the second half plays out like a punch line there really isn’t enough teeth in the prelude to that event justifying this kind of a turnaround? Adi, an educated city bred male is not interested in avenging injustice of being held captive in what appears to be an extra-judicial siege by aggressive posers. Adi is far more affected/obsessed with the fact that his naïve, puritan girlfriend might have been sullied by the vile Mangesh’s touch and sets out to make fair game of Mangesh’s wife (Bhumika Chawla) and daughter after a chance revelation about the extortionists’ true colours.
Creative license might be forgiven but loopholes and lethargic scenarios in the script are unforgivable. What might have been a taut, nail-biting revenge thriller ends up being an unnecessarily long-drawn psychological exposure of toxic masculinity. This sort of a story idea with a handful of characters works better in the short feature format. An hour and a few minutes plus would have been ideal to make this film a relentless thrill on the senses. But Shashant allows the story to drag, deliberating recklessly on the minor moments and losing out on the bigger payoff. The treatment is rather unbecoming for a suspenseful revenge thriller. Too much time is wasted establishing motives when everything is pretty much obvious and in-your-face from the moment the two lovers are accosted. The slow-turning events fail to up the suspense quotient so the intended surprises fail to come good. What makes this effort bearable are the actors. Sharad Kelkar is in his element essaying a rare full-length villainous role, Kishore Kadam is effective as his partner in crime while Siddhant and Vedika are earnest and amiable as the young couple in the middle of it all. This film is a well-intentioned attempt at thrills but listless segmenting of intentions doesn’t allow for much purchase or enjoyment!
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