Mission Majnu Hindi Movie
Believability goes for a toss in first-time director Shantanu Bagchi's Mission Majnu. This film, based on true events, is about an Indian undercover agent trying to find out the whereabouts of a nuclear mission in Pakistan, and stop it. Sidharth Malhotra plays Amandeep Ajitpal Singh, also known as Tariq Ali. One RAW officer describes Ajitpal as the best cadet in the academy. At this point, we expect him to be super intelligent, but as it turns out, the army in Pakistan is super dumb.
Scene after scene, we see Ajitpal aka Tariq extract pieces of intelligence in preposterous ways. For instance, he even walks into a Pakistani general's house as a tailor and extracts intel from him through a regular conversation. No one suspects Tariq when he goes to a bookshop and buys a pair of nuclear physics books. Tariq puts bits and pieces of information together to come up with the theory that Pakistan is building a nuclear bomb near the Indo-Pak border. After all, he is the best cadet in the academy (pun intended).
Tariq is not just smart but also super flexible (pun intended). It is this flexibility that allows him to dodge dozens of bullets from Pakistani law enforcement while clinging on to a moving train. A lot of this is silly, but there is some fun to be had if you just go with the flow. Part of the fun comes from watching Sharib Hashmi and Kumud Mishra's characters execute the mission with Malhotra's Ajitpal. The movie maintains a fun and silly tone up to a point, so I was just beginning to enjoy it.
But the mindless fun soon goes away as the movie suddenly takes a dramatic turn and the makers try to integrate elements of patriotism and romance into the story. The romance angle never works and is somewhat corny because the writing does not quite match up. The patriotic angle also fails to hit the mark because it is so cheesy. Unfortunately, Hindi films keep mistaking patriotism for shouts of "Bharat Mata Ki Jai" and "Jai Ho." It is so cliched, a bit like the "Chak De!" chants in sports films.
Some of the scenes involving the higher-ups in the Centre are also laughably silly. It seems funny when Avijit Dutt's PM Morarji Desai suggests yoga and sends sweets to Ashwath Bhatt's General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Surely, the exchanges between the Indian Prime Minister and Pakistani General could not have been this friendly.
The movie is also stereotypical in that it portrays many Pakistanis as scheming people with lots of hatred towards Indians. On the other hand, the Indian characters are shown as upstanding people with enough humanity in them. Nevertheless, the movie does not have the kind of hate-mongering that we often see in such genre films.
What keeps the film afloat are its performances. Rashmika Mandanna and Sidharth Malhotra tackle their parts with plenty of sincerity, and some of their scenes together are lovely. Sharib Hashmi and Kumud Mishra infuse their parts with lots of energy. And, while being comical at times, many of the army officers appear reasonably believable.
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