Aiyaary Review

Neeraj Pandey is a renowned director, who has given several hits. His movies like A Wednesday, Special 26, Baby are edge of the seat thrillers. He works on tight scripts & extracts good performances from his actors. Does he deliver the goods in his latest movie – Aiyaary?



Aiyaary stars Manoj Bajpai & Siddharth Malhotra. Pandey’s frequent collaborator – Akshay Kumar is not in the movie. But his other regulars – Anupam Kher & Naseeruddin Shah play small but vital roles in the film. The movie is based on an army intelligence officer Jai Bakshi(Siddharth Malhotra) & his mentor Col. Abhay Singh(Manoj Bajpai). The protegee – who is a third generation army man, decides to go rogue. He releases sensitive information to the press, which leads to their entire covert ops team getting disbanded. His mentor is now entrusted with the job of hunting him down. It is only in the second half that we are told why Jai Bakshi decided to go rogue. The movie starts off in Delhi, but then moves on to London. An ex-army man who is now an arms dealer – Mukesh Kapoor(Adil Hussain), gets involved in the fight between the mentor & his protegee’. The media, politicians, army, middlemen all get sucked into the story. Whether it is the corrupt forces or is it the upright army officers who win in the end is the big question.
Aiyaary is a out & out Manoj Bajpai film. He shoulders the responsibility of the movie well. Manoj is definitely the best thing about the movie. Siddharth Malhotra is decent. He has a love interest in the movie – Sonia(Rakul Preet), who is an IT engineer. Rakul Preet is okay. Nadira Babbar & Pooja Hegde also have supporting roles in the movie.

The script is good & its similarities with a real life scam adds a bit of authenticity.
But sadly for the movie, there are quite a few flaws. The love story inserted in the movie, totally derails the movie proceedings. Anupam Kher & Naseeruddin Shah are totally wasted in the movie. Their role doesn’t do justice to their acting talents. The movie lacks enough power packed dialogues, action sequences or stunts which would have enthralled the audiences. What you get instead is a done & dusted treatment of the movie. This movie won’t stay with you 10 mins after you exit the theatre.
What could have been a great movie,is reduced to being an average fare due to lack of creativity on the director’s part. This movie is not in the league of ‘A Wednesday’, but is not a pain to watch either. Do watch it for Manoj Bajpai & it being loosely based on the Adarsh Scam.

Our Rating: (3 / 5)

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