Code Name Tiranga Movie Review: Parineeti Chopra and Harrdy Sandhu Can’t Save This Cheerless Action-Thriller (LatestLY Exclusive)

Code Name Tiranga Movie Review: Can Parineeti Chopra become this decade's "Vijay Shanti"? Can she be the female action hero Bollywood needs in this decade? There is an attempt at turning Parineeti into a 'Tiger' with Ribhu Dasgupta's spy thriller Code Name Tiranga, and the movie has quite a few action sequences in it, including one that is shown in first person POV. Alas, Code Name Tiranga does little to turn Ms Chopra into a legit action star or be a worthwhile thrilling watch, even though it did show promise of being one in some places. Code Name Tiranga: Parineeti Chopra Recalls Filming For Harrdy Sandhu Starrer During COVID-19 Pandemic.

Dr Mirza Ali (Harrdy Sandhu, decent enough) meets Ismat (Parineeti Chopra) quite by chance. The mild-mannered doctor falls in love with this beautiful lady and marries her, and they fly off to Afghanistan, where Mirza does social work and has made good relations with the locals there. Unbeknownst to him, Ismat is actually Durga, a RAW officer and she is on a mission to catch a fugitive terror mastermind Omar (Sharad Kelkar).

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The setup of Mirza and Ismat's romance, followed by a romantic song and then their wedding (which happens offscreen) and revelation of Ismat as Durga, and her identity discovery by Mirza all happen in the first act of the movie, which also includes a shootout scene during a wedding. While it is cool that Code Name Tiranga ain't wasting much time here, the fact that the romance gets shortchanged in the process is quite an underwhelming factor.

Durga, who gets a new mission a year later, this time to finish off her former leader Bakshi (Dibyendu Bhattacharya) who has gone rogue and is now a captive for Omar, finds her moral conundrum in having betrayed the gentle Mirza. She once again (quite conveniently at that) stumbles upon Mirza, and they try to rediscover the lost spark. But the weight of that romance upon her mission is sorely undervalued especially when the track taken an emotional turn later on, all because 1- the love story deserved more space, 2. - Mirza as a character is never explored beyond being this kind but hurt samaritan. Also dialogues like "Goli pehle bahut lagi hai, par dard pehli baar hua hai" don't exactly serve the purpose here.

It would have helped the film better if the action sequences and the spy portions of Code Name Tiranga shined more in comparison of the love story, which isn't the case here. At least the movie is shot in striking locales, the first half is somewhat decent and the setup for some of the 'espionage' scenes are thrilling enough. Like the sequence where Durga tries to infiltrate Omar's fortress to kill Bakshi has all the promises of turning out to be an enthralling action scene. The sad part is, it doesn't.

Littered with loopholes and false tension, the scene loses out on its thrill factor when you realise all the efforts of Durga to disguise herself and infiltrate the fortress comes to naught, when all it took was seconds for her gun-wielding compatriots to barge in and create a mess. Even more irksome was how her associate (Rajit Kapur) could easily get himself into the security feed room of the fortress, making you wonder why the duo didn't opt for this route.

The above scene is an glaring example of how the screenplay doesn't fully commit itself to turning Code Name Tiranga into a smart thriller. Not that it never does. There is a scene where Durga (as Ismat) teaches Mirza Morse code during their romance phase, which unexpectedly comes to play later. Such 'smart' scenes are, however, quite rare. Otherwise Code Name Tiranga turns out to be a drab thriller with pretty predictable twists, one-note villains that effectuate the tropes they are set in, convenient plot resolutions (the scene where Durga retraces her way to Omar's hideout blindfolded is simply silly) and a listless finale. Parineeti Chopra Prepares for Her Action-Packed Role in ‘Code Name Tiranga’ (Watch Video).

Even the performances do little to save the film. Parineeti Chopra is quite okay as Ismat/Durga but her act is hampered more by how disinterestedly her character is presented, never allowing her to make the role far more engaging. She is even underserved by the action scenes, where when it goes hard, she either has a burkha or a burlap sack covering her face, or in what is the movie's most WTF moment, goes first person POV in the finale. Taking a cue out of FPS games, such scenes have been emulated in films like Doom and Hardcore Henry, and even in Bollywood in Force 2. However, there is a very evident 'video-game' feeling that plays out when Code Name Tiranga attempts the style that undercuts the seriousness of the situation, culminating into unexpected hilarity nears its finale where when Durga sees her reflection in a mirror, we see a evidently CGI image of Parineeti. How did anyone allow such a still to be in the movie?

Yay!

- Locales are Beautiful

- Occasions where the Movie Shines Sparsely

Nay!

- The Espionage Sequences Deserve Smarter Writing

- Predictable Plot Drama

- The Finale

Final Thoughts

Code Name Tiranga deserves some credit for putting an actress as talented as Parineeti Chopra to lead an action thriller - a rarity in Bollywood these days (Dhaakad, being another such recent example). Code Name Tiranga falters big time, though, in not giving her a movie that is smart or thrilling enough to shine as an action hero.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 14, 2022 10:15 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).