A leading man saddled with a role too big for his shoes. A story that becomes so unnecessarily complex that it gets tangled in its own web. A climax that makes you think that this movie should’ve been titled ‘Mockbir’.
Hardly anything except a few finely executed sequences goes right in the grim Mukhbir directed by Mani Shankar .
The
film tells the story of a young guy ( Sammir Dattani ) who’s trained to be an informer by the government intelligence (an oxymoron?) agencies. Working under the righteous officer ( Om Puri ) the informer penetrates the Naxal dens, the underworld, and eventually a terrorist network headed by a fanatic ( Rahul Dev ) who plans to blow up Mumbai.
On this journey, the mukhbir puts his life on the line many times and even converts to Islam to make headway to a terror group. And by the time the mukhbir wants to quit it all, he finds he’s far too deep in the muck to rescue himself.
The movie flounders because it tries too hard to engage a viewer. Instead of keeping things simple and maintain a steady build-up in the plot, Mani Shankar tries to captivate the viewer with one big sequence after another. The result is an over-stewed product that only leaves a viewer singed.
Sammir Dattani, the leading man, really tries hard to do justice to his role, but he looks too young and has neither the screen presence nor the maturity handle the part with conviction. There’s a brief romantic interlude between him and Raima Sen , who looks much better than she acts. Sunil Shetty ’s wooden performance goes to show that some things never change in Bollywood, while Rahul Dev is much better playing a fanatic who hates nothing more than mukhbirs.
Om Puri and Sushant Singh are the only two actors who shine in this dull film.
In a nutshell – and that too a very small one – ‘Mukhbir’ is a waste of time.
