14

Overall Impression Of The Movie:

Agent Vinod, the dream project of Saif Ali Khan, finally hits the screen after almost two years in the making. Saif Ali Khan & the director, Sriram Raghavan, ate up realms of newsprint and airwaves to tell us that Agent Vinod was not the same as his more legendary counterpart James Bond and they had worked very hard to present “Agent Vinod” as an indigenous product fashioned in the true Bollywood style. At the end of the movie, you are definitely left impressed with the effort that went into writing the script & the production values but the film, as a whole, leaves you with an incomplete feeling

What Is It About:

Like most good and bad movies in the secret service agent genre, this one too also deals with a nuclear bomb that lands up in the hands of the bad guys with in the first 15 minutes of the movie. In parallel, Agent Vinod (Saif) of RAW (the Indian Intelligence Wing) makes his introduction in the desert of Afghanistan where he escapes from his captors by literally talking and shooting his way out. Agent Vinod is then handed the assignment of tracking down the nuclear bomb and its detonator for which he lands up in Russia following his first clue. From there the action moves to Morocco where he encounters the beautiful Iram (Kareena) who has her own mysterious and dangerous past. The plot keeps thickening with a number of sub-plots and dubious characters walking in and out, while the body count steadily keeps going up. The action moves across Latvia, Karachi, Somalia & finally the chase ends in New Delhi before briefly moving to London again!

What Is Good:

Agent Vinod’s biggest strength is Sriram Raghavan’s script that reads like a thriller with each character fleshed out to only so much detail as required for the character’s screen time. Despite the multiple sub-plots or the sheer number of characters in the script, all of them are neatly tied up by the end. With a script like this, it becomes easier for the actors to play their part and almost all the characters stand out. Saif was passable as Agent Vinod with his suave and sophisticated looks and looked very natural in the action scenes. Kareena gets an intriguing character to play and she plays it subtly without going over-board. Cinematography by Muralidharan is brilliant and he captures the mood of all the locations used in the films. The evocative background score by Daniel George is a plus point of the movie with some brilliant pieces of music used during the action sequences. The cinematography and background score add to the impact of the shoot-out scenes.

What Is Bad:

Ironically, the drawback for Agent Vinod is the movie’s script. Sriram Raghavan, the director, could have adapted his script to reduce the movie’s running time. This is more so in the in the second half where it slackens when it should be racing towards the climax. While the idea of putting in sub-plots and multiple characters spread across locations is fine on paper, the same does not always work in the visual medium. The last 20 minutes is disappointing and does not live up to the standards set in the rest of the movie.

Me Thinks:

For most of its running time, Agent Vinod is a well-crafted, intelligent movie that keeps you guessing in the first half when it does not take itself very seriously. The second half fumbles when it tries to get serious and that is where the interest wanes.

Tailpiece:

The background of Agent Vinod remains a mystery till the end !

123telugu.com Rating : 3/5

Aks

Legend:

5 – Flawless

4 – Must Watch

3 – One Time Watch

2 – Wait for the DVD

1 – Stay Away