Movie Review: D-Day

Director: Nikhil Advani
Cast: Irrfan Khan, Arjun Rampal, Huma Qureshi, Rishi Kapoor
Rating: ***
Nikhil Advani’s D-Day can be tagged as India’s own version of the Oscar nominated Zero Dark Thirty. To a decent extent, it’s an engaging and entertaining experience. The bigger challenge for D-Day is the fact that it’s a fiction, unlike the Hollywood flick which was reconstruction of a real manhunt. The idea still seems far-fetched in India subtext but the execution is made largely credible in cinematic context.

D-Day details the planning and procedure involved in Operation Goldman – the covert mission to bring back India’s most wanted criminal, Iqbal (Rishi Kapoor) aka Goldman, from Pakistani soil where he is seeking refuge since ages. Iqbal largely remains underground but shall come out in open to attend his son’s wedding in Karachi. This is the D-day when four Indian spies – Wali (Irrfan Khan), Rudra (Arjun Rampal), Zoya (Huma Qureshi) and Aslam (Aakash Dahiya) have planned to attack and arrest Iqbal.

From his flamboyant sunglasses to Marathi roots, Rishi Kapoor’s gaudy Goldman is essentially modeled on the lines of international gangster Dawood Ibrahim. And thereby the film exploits the national sentiment of getting even with the most odd man, like in Neeraj Pandey’s A Wednesday. However unlike A Wednesday which was quite uncomplicated, D-Day being an espionage thriller is intricately woven.

The film opens on the D-day itself with the RAW agents getting hold of Goldman. And though it soon cuts into a flashback, detailing the meticulous planning that goes into the execution of Operation Goldman, you somehow fear if the film has arrived prematurely by using its trump card too early. However Nikhil Advani with his writing team of Suresh Nair and Ritesh Shah comes up with a pleasant surprise as the mission fails midways and the tables turn on the Indian agents in Pakistani land.

Not only does Advani dare to design his film’s antagonist on one of the world’s most wanted criminal, he doesn’t shy away from setting the film fundamentally on Pakistani lands. Sukant Panigrahy’s production design pulls off the prerequisites plausibly. Of the four protagonists, Irrfan Khan’s character of an Indian spy who has a family in Pakistan, oblivious of his profession is the best developed. When Arjun Rampal falls for a prostitute (Shruti Haasan), you sense that the writers are falling for stock characters. Further, somewhere personal vendetta takes over his original drive. Nevertheless Shruti Haasan’s death sequence is evocatively edited and sensitively shot over a slow motion song number.

One drawback in the D-Day’s scheme of things is that the criminal is wanted alive (as against Zero Dark Thirty). Blame it to the Indian governance or Bollywood old-school where the villain was always arrested alive rather than dead (since Sholay days), but this conflict makes the film more fanciful in its quest. Also the (countrywide) audience gratification with just an arrest in such a case won’t be immediate or absolute. And when the film realizes this very fact in its climax, the entire struggle to bring him alive seems futile.

The film is well shot and crisply edited. Niranjan Iyengar’s dialogues, often designed as robust repartees, smoothly take the story forward. Thankfully the action is not overdone and is balanced with the need in the narrative.

From the ensemble case, Irrfan Khan brings out his diverse conflicts so effortlessly that he undoubtedly is the scene-stealer. Since Arjun Rampal is supposed to play a cold-blooded agent, he doesn’t have to emote much and is just right in his role. Rishi Kapoor, in his heavy vocals and dominating personality has an authoritative presence. However his character is more sketchy and gimmicky. Nasser as the RAW chief is impressive. Huma Qureshi, Shruti Haasan, Sree Swara Dubey and Aakash Dahiya are decent in their respective roles. Chandan Roy Sanyal plays the archetypal caricaturish villain sidekick who often messes up things.

D-Day is a well-intended social film and a well-executed thriller.