Mission Majnu movie review: Sidharth Malhotra, Rashmika Mandanna espionage film is no Shershaah, but almost delivers

It seems that Sidharth Malhotra is making a career out of playing martyrs on screen. After having regaled the audience with his stellar act as Vikram Batra in Shershaah, the dapper actor is back in a patriotic film, which is reportedly based on true events, but is a fictive retelling of Indian spies thwarting Pakistan's nuclear dream.

With a film, so close in flavour, to his last outing, parallels are bound to be drawn, an at that, the questions rises - does Mission Majnu do justice to Sidharth as Shershaah had done?

Mission Majnu: Plotline

Shantanu Bagchi's directorial debut, Mission Majnu, has an interesting premise. The film revolves around RAW agents infiltrating the ranks of Pakistan army, bureaucracy and general life to find out its sinister design to build an atom bomb, after India’s first successful nuclear test in 1974.

Tariq aka Amandeep Singh (Sidharth Malhotra) is a RAW agent living in Pakistan, married to a blind woman Nasreen (Rashmika Mandanna). Burdened with a murky past of having a traitorous father, his life changes, when he’s assigned a covert operation in Pakistan. As part of this mission, Tariq with his accomplices (Kumud Mishra and Sharib Hashmi) has to provide hard proof of Pakistan’s secret attempt at carrying out a nuclear test. The film follows Tariq's attempts at inching closer to the truth, while trying to balance his love for his country, and that towards his Pakistani wife. However, whether Bagchi succeeds in bringing to the screen that vacillation in faith, love and patriotism, becomes the core of the film.

Mission Majnu: Review

Mission Majnu falters. The film, in moments of patriotic zeal is an intriguing watch, but wavers when the director decides to focus on peripheral characters. Sidharth as Tariq is good. Having proved his mettle in the patriotic genre once with Shershaah, he excels in this patriotic film as well. However, the actor's craft leave you worried that he might be getting typecast in jigonistic material onscreen. Rashmika Mandanna, as blind Nasreen is good, unfortunately does not have much to offer. However, character arcs of both Kumud Mishra and Sharib Hashmi during the climactic moments of the film bring about a sense of denouement.

The tussle between India and Pakistan has been a great fodder for cinema over the ages. The animosity between the two neighbouring countries ripped apart by the partition has effortlessly spilled on to the silver screen, proving catalyst for cinematic plot movement. As such, Sidharth Malhotra's Mission Majnu is yet again an addition to the patriotic trope so effectively nurtured by Bollywood. However, is it as effective as Shershaah? Not by a long mile. While the film has its heart in the right place, it misses the mark, perhaps by an inch or two at the editor's block.

Mission Majnu is currently streaming on Netflix.