Friday, April 6, 2012

Agent Vinod: An Incompetent Secret Agent Surviving on Coincidences


Who are not able to gather how the film would be from the title of this post, just imagine Pink Panther without the comedy part. Like Inspector Clouseau, Agent Vinod is incompetent. What else you can say about a secret agent who is never aware of his surroundings. He get so engaged secretly listening to a conversation that he doesn't even realise that someone can come from behind and hit him on the head. Almost every time he manages to escape alive is because of shear coincidences. For the first time I have seen a serious secret agent believing on everyone he meets despite being betrayed on many occasions. I think it would be unfair to Vinod to corner him like this when the head of his agency is stupid enough to make a call to ISI head and asks him point blank, if he is involved in the ongoing crisis and even lets Pakistani High Commissioner inside the control room of RAW. Wish international espionage was so simple. Rather than trying to figure out what is going on, just call the people you suspect and ask them direct questions. 

Movie starts with Agent Vinod being caught because of his incompetence in the middle of an operation inside some factory in Pakistan. He shows his smoothness by exposing his fellow agent to his captors and then saves himself and his partner by sheer coincidence because his captors are equally or even more incompetent. Then the same thing repeats in different cities on different parts of the world. This somewhere involves some shady stereotype characters and a nuclear bomb. In this process he meets his Pakistani counterpart Iram and they fall in love, because that's what secret agents of two warring nations do. 

Saif Ali Khan is smooth and is able to pull off the desi bond tag, at this moment I cannot think of anyone else who could suit this tag better than him. Unfortunately he does not have the script to back him up. Since the movie was not about exploring acting talent of the cast, lets avoid discussing that. The movie takes you on a world tour making you wander if RAW agent Vinod doubled as a travel agent. There is not all bad about the movie though. There is one action scene shot is a restaurant in continuous shot with single camera, which is truly remarkable.