By Hindustan Times
Agent Vinod (2012) has convinced me that similar to an anomaly called the Indian road, the Hindi spy thriller isn't going to save lots of the day. Indian cinema may well be going global and all that but some genres that just don't work of their current debased state.
Bollywood's spy game started long ago in 1967 with a surprise hit called Farz. A remake of a Telugu film, Feroz Khan refused the lead convinced that the film wouldn't ring a bell with the audience. Or even he didn't fancy the speculation of a superspy, Agent 116, being called Gopal. Written by Arudra and directed by Ravikant Nagaich, Farz was blessed with some great songs like Mast baharon ka main ashiq and Happy birthday to you Sunita that helped it becoming a large hit. Farz not just made Jeetendra a start but was also the primary big box-office success for the genre. It helped make the following few years extremely conducive for spy thrillers like Humsaya (1968), Aankhen (1968) and Yakeen (1969).
Agent VinodThe spy were around for over a decade since Samadhi (1950) where a British Agent spied on Indian National Army operatives however it was the arriving of James Bond together with the 2 wars the rustic fought within the 1960s that made them stand out. The implausibility of an Indian and Chinese resembling one another notwithstanding, Humsaya's plot pulled the entire stops to make it a rewarding watch. The spy thrillers and the horror films of the 1960s could be thematically different from the regular films of that period but they, too, were blessed with good music that helped them become popular.
Looking at Agent Vinod one can not help but feel disappointed. Agent Vinod tries to be a fine looking film where the master spy races around the former Soviet Union to outsmart some bad guys who've a nuclear bomb at their disposal but doesn't have anything beneath the skin. Within the four decades since Farz nothing much seems to have changed for the Hindi film spy and that's the reason a shame. What's concerning the genre that demands the hero to be nothing not up to an even looking, smooth talking cool guy? Of course, Agent Vinod can't escape the weight of being the long run custodian of the James Bond lineage but must he jump, shoot and dodge 1,000,000 bullets in pants tighter than Jeetendra's in Farz? Right from the outlet sequence where Vinod or whatever his name is, outsmarts the Taliban to the time he struts his way out and in of trouble across Russia, Morocco, Pakistan and plenty of more exotic places there isn't any single scene where the RAW agent looks as if he knows what the hell is occurring. To me it appeared like Agent Vinod was seeking to locate the closest men's room for all the 150 minutes of the film's screen time.
Cinematic spies run the chance of being flashy like Bond 303 (1985), Gunmaster G-9 in Suraksha (1979) and Wardat (1981) but there were films like Sharmilee (1971) and Sharara (1981) where the spy was the woman the hero loved. Ironically the ladies have all had interesting roles to play in earlier spy thrillers like Humsaya, Aankhen and Yakeen in comparison to Agent Vinod. Agent Vinod is an example of ways the folk who make films imagine their audience. They believe that we predict a spy must be good looking, fast talking, one-liner dropping dude who seems to spend more time trimming his beard than anything. Spy for Hindi cinema is a personality who can only be imagined in well-cut suits like Agent Vinod or like Sunny Ajay Chakraborty/ Arun Sharma /Major Batra/Wahid Deol in Hero- The affection Story of a Spy (2003). So, a Hollywood could be still seek its Alec Leamas within the Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965), or George Smiley within the BBC's TV Series or the 2011 film version of John le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or Jason Bourne within the Bourne Series to balance the extremely suave and highly unreal James Bond but we would not be as inspired to do the similar. Not yet a minimum of. Strange as Bollywood doesn't wish to look far for inspiration; it just must pick up the newspaper and skim about real RAW Agents like Surjeet Singh who spent 30 years in a Pakistani jail.
Gautam Chintamani is an award-winning writer/filmmaker with over a decade of expertise across print and electronic mediums.
