CAST : Parineeti Chopra, Sharad Kelkar, Harrdy Sandhu

DIRECTOR: Ribhu Dasgupta

Durga (Parineeti Chopra), a special agent, is tasked with apprehending Khalid Omar (Sharad Kelkar), the mastermind behind the 2001 Parliament attack. While on the assignment, she develops feelings for Dr. Mirza Ali (Harrdy Sandhu). Will she put her love for him ahead of the mission and jeopardising the mission, or will she be able to complete it?

Parineeti Chopra starred in Ribhu Dasgupta’s previous psychological thriller, The Girl on the Train, but she takes on a completely new persona this time.

Written and directed by Ribhu Dasgupta, Code Name :Tiranga follows an undercover agent Ismat/Durga who marries a civilian Dr. Mirza Ali as part of her plans to capture Omar in Turkey.

Parineeti Chopra takes on the villains by hand-to-hand combat and the gunfights are quite slick. Her determination to shape her action avatar in a credible manner is palpable.

Now, what seems like a brilliant premise on paper, does not turn out to be such a well executed feature film.

There are terrorists who keep their photograph as the phone’s wallpaper, the climax scene is straight out of Call Of Duty (FPP style), India’s smartest ‘Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) speaks dumb. The film lacks intelligence and it’s about this basic lack of reason, motivation and smart plots that lets the movie down.

Tribhuvan Babu Sadineni’s cinematography tries extremely hard to at least keep one department out of the chaos & he does that pretty well. Gilad Benamram’s background score does not map itself to the narrative.

Harrdy Sandhu who was last seen in Kabir Khan’s 83, does well to support to the narrative. Sharad Kelkar’s Omar, tries too hard to give his character credibility but is let down by the cliched character tropes. Dibyendu Bhattacharya and Rajit Kapur are also underutilised.

Action choreography is great as it should be in this thriller that gets a little confusing between plots from Salman’s Tiger franchise or even closer to Alia Bhatt’s Raazi at times as it traverses several known sub plots to come up with its own narrative.

The major issue with the film is that it is predictable and it makes all your predictions come true, and it makes all your predictions come true albeit after a long long stare at the screen.

This however does not take away from the movie that Parineeti deserves better scripts that showcase her immense talent.