Movie Review: AGENT VINOD (2012) – Bollywood’s Bond!
The Bond franchise has been a powerhouse in terms of Hollywood Cinematic History. Spanning 20+ Films and I can’t even count how many actors; Bond has been a staple for the spy genre. So it’s almost surprising that a big time commercially mainstream Bollywood knock off version hadn’t arrived until 2012. Sure Dharmendra did a bunch of spy thrillers in Bollywood in the 60’s, when he was a pretty boy. But finally we see an action packed cool guy Indian Bond in AGENT VINOD!
Rating: 2 Out Of 5 Stars
The Saif Ali Khan starrer boasts of everything from action, style, finesse and hot girls blended into awesome Bollywood numbers. I don’t really need to tell you much about this kind of spy thriller, other than the fact that it involves a huge world domination plot by some evil baddie who’s actually a renowned member of society. And then you’ve got a conspiracy folding into conspiracy, making you scratch your head all the way until the last scene. And so on and so forth.
I’ll just breakdown to you WHY AGENT VINOD didn’t work. And the long and short of it all is… run time.
AGENT VINOD was TOO long of a movie. Its 2 hour and 36 minute run time could’ve been trimmed to 1 hour and 40 minutes, and it would’ve been a better movie over all. The film starts off with a great action sequence; innovative stunts, mind blowing music and just a bang on performance by Saif Ali Khan. However, as the movie progresses, we lose that fast pacing, and in turn, receive unnecessarily long scenes that go nowhere. Monologues and shots that serve no purpose to the over all story in any way whatsoever.
The Director of AGENT VINOD, Sriram Raghavan, is the same guy who did the BEST Bollywood Thriller of all time, with JOHNNY GADDAR, which was a relatively lower budget and shorter film. So it’s sad to see him lose his touch wit ha bigger budget and more ‘star’ powered film.
There came a point where I’m left wondering when the hell the movie will end. The dialogues lose focus as well, as they start becoming trite and unnecessary. A monologue could’ve been reverted to 3 lines and been more impactful than what they had in this movie.
Not that there weren’t redeeming factors. Saif Ali Khan as the title character was great. His blend of soft-spoken badass spy was refreshing from his ‘I’m cute’ image. Kareena Kapoor serves her purpose as the villain’s sidekick, who’s good… and then bad, but ultimately good again. The story itself was meh, but could’ve been better if everything was kept to a minimum.
AGENT VINOD was a great film, and I wanted to like it. It had all the making of being an amazing action thriller, the likes of which have been previously unseen in Bollywood. However, the editing sucked. A film that didn’t need to be longer than 1 hour and 30 minutes got dragged onto 2.5 hours. Horrible.
3 Comments
Anna Singh · December 27, 2012 at 1:15 AM
I agree with you…it was a bit too long. but i still enjoyed it. it was just as good as a bond film, if not better…i think Saif did a great job, as an actor and producer. i just saw Skyfall as well, and i have to admit i kept thinking in my head the whole time, Agent Vinod was just as good as this.
Shah Shahid · December 29, 2012 at 9:31 AM
I enjoyed it, and wanted so very much to like it. I just thought it lost focus after the 2 hour mark and just got dragged on. That ruined the experience for me.
Otherwise everything else was done very well. I don’t know about comparing it to SKYFALL (I haven’t seen it yet) but I’ll respect your comparison. Somewhat. :p
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[…] first rodeo with this genre either, as he played a spy in Sriram Raghavan’s Desi Bond film ‘Agent Vinod‘. Even Katrina Kaif has been accustomed to the amount of intense stunts demanded of her from […]