Romeo Akbar Walter: Review, Cast, Director

Romeo Akbar Walter: Review, Cast, Director

Johnson ThomasUpdated: Wednesday, May 29, 2019, 12:12 AM IST
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Film: Romeo Akbar Walter (RAW)

Cast: John Abraham, Mouni Roy, Sikander Kher, Alka Amin, Jackie Shroff, Anil George, Raghubir Yadav

Director: Bobby Grewal

Rating: * * *

Bobby Grewal and John Abraham’s attempt to imprint their vision of what transpired in the lead-up to the liberation of Bangladesh, is dark and resonating but unfortunately, there’s little to excite or thrill. The film opens with a bang- we see a close-up of a bloodied and brutalised face before a Pakistani Army Colonel (Sikander Kher) walks in and goes about giving him the third degree. The prisoner Akbar Mallick is being held for suspected undercover espionage activities in a Pakistani prison in Lahore.

Grewal sets up a narrative that is entirely caught up in establishing Rehmatullah ‘Romeo’ Ali’s (John Abraham) penchant for disguise, his subsequent recruitment, training and deployment by RAW(Research And Analysis Wing). Given that Romeo, the son of an Indian army major who refrains from joining the army at the insistence of his widowed mother, suddenly accedes to going undercover, also needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, In the run-up to East Pakistan’s secession, RAW agents were supposedly deployed to keep a check on fast changing developments, helping the central think-tank led by Shrikant Rai (Jackie Shroff) to counter-strategise whenever required. And that is interesting initially but without stunt action and thrills to go with it, John’s valiant impersonation of Romeo, Akbar and Walter just doesn’t cut ice.

Set in 1971, Grewal’s film, though fictionalised, is a genuine effort to tell a story but it doesn’t articulate its impressions with any great coherence or guile. The narrative is strong on period details, production values and gritty camerawork but the writing definitely needed more teeth and the editing, more craftiness. If you are expecting action and thrills from this John Abraham film you certainly won’t find it here. The narrative is rather procedural and gets bogged down by the nitty-gritties of espionage to-dos. Mouni Roy’s presence is forgettable.

The attempt to insert an emotive thread by showcasing Romeo’s attachment to his mother (Alka Amin) also feels like window dressing. The film lacks edge-of-the-seat tension and intrigue, feels rather unnecessarily protracted, and has an end-game that lacks conviction. Even the tone and texture is a little too even to generate interest. The chase sequence where three Pakistani army men pursue Akbar in the bylanes of Liaquatabad happens to be the only time when the tempo picks up a bit. Anil George has a significant role here as Isaq Afridi, and he makes the most of it but it’s John Abraham’s surprisingly tangible, intense and neatly rounded performance that more than makes up for all the negatives here!

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