Mission Istanbul Hindi Movie

To sum things up, don't expect much from this Mission. Just don't bother watching it, unless you're a hardcore action fan and don't care much about content. Jul 26, 2008 By Ashok Nayak

Mission Istanbul is directed by Apoorva Lakhia (Mumbai Se Aaya Mera Dost, Shootout At Lokhanwala) and features Viviek Oberoi, Zayed Khan, Shabbhir Alhuwalia and Nikitin Dheer in key roles.

Vikas Sagar (Zayed Khan) is one of the most promising journalists in the country. Owais Husain (Sunil Shetty) who heads a controversial Istanbul based news channel makes him an offer to head the channel for an outrageous salary and other perks. This offer came at a better time for Vikas who was undergoing a painful divorce with his wife Anjali (Shriya Saran).

But little does he know that one decision will change his life forever. When he voices his plans to quit the channel, he is reminded by Turkish commando, Rizwan Khan (Vivek Oberoi), how others who quit had been bumped off because they knew too much.

In a place where the gun has the last laugh, will a journalist survive or will he fall prey like many others?

Add Mission Istanbul to the long list of nonsensical movies, which simply takes the viewer for granted. The sequences intended to be serious are comical. We have a George Bush sequence that was probably intended to be funny but irritates. The lead men (Viviek and Zayed) crash-open windows, doors, jump onto helicopters and continue to fight a security powered by 100s of men.

In another scene, the 2 heroes are on the run, one about to go take bath warns the other not to make any calls and the other, you guessed it right, does exactly the same. In no time, the floor is vibrating and a terrorist on helicopter fires bullets, well our heroes are hiding behind a sofa, again not a bullet can touch them.

In yet another stupid scene when Zayed, Viviek and Shweta Bhardwaj are surrounded by terrorists. They laugh, drink a can of mountain dew, shout "Dar Ke Aage Jeet Hai", take on the armed 20 odd terrorists and eventually survive unhurt!! Can't get more stupid, unrealistic than this, can it?

And from when did news reporters turn into warriors? The Zayed love angle in the second half has been done to death in several movies. What was the director actually trying to do with Mission Istanbul? Hard to understand how they approve and direct such unbearably stupid scripts.

Performances are no better! Viviek Oberoi seems to have lost all his acting talent. The actor touted as the future superstar after the success of Saathiya is much better than Zayed Khan though. Zayed struggles to emote and overacts in every scene. Shirya Saran is wasted. Shweta Bhardwaj is poor. Shabbhir Alhuwalia is superb. Abhishek Bachchan in a, horribly choreographed and performed item number, is a disaster. Nikitin Dheer is okay.

To sum things up, don't expect much from this Mission. Just don't bother watching it, unless you're a hardcore action fan and don't care much about content.