Action minus traction

Parbina Rashid

Move over ISI. The ISIS is the toast of the season. At least, for filmmakers. We barely got over ‘The Kerala Files’, and here we have another one. The ISIS fever has spread to OTT too. ‘The Freelancer’, which is set to stream, is again based on the book, ‘A Ticket To Syria’. And mind you, the latest crop does not toe the line of Bhai demolishing ISIS modules in Syria (remember Salman Khan in ‘Tiger Zinda Hai’?). It’s now our heroines who are being tormented by the terrorists.

‘Akelli’ is the story of such a brave heroine who goes to Iraq, Mosul to be precise, to find employment after her heroic deed costs her an airlines job in India. But before we proceed with the story, let us tell you, she is not completely akeli in this kahani. She has the full support of the writers’ team, which bails her out of every tricky situation with their convenient writing.

Jyoti (Nushrratt Bharuccha) from Punjab is the sole earning member of her family after her brother and sister-in-law disappear in the Kedarnath floods. She has to pay back her debts and provide for her family. She plans to go to Muscat, Oman, to earn but instead lands in Mosul, Iraq, thanks to her callous, greedy agent.

Her arrival is greeted with a gruesome terror act. Things, however, ease out as she befriends Rafeeq (Nishant Dahiya), the manager of the garment factory where she works. But soon the factory gets attacked by terrorists and the workers are held hostage. What follows is a series of Jyoti’s valiant fights in a country where she is neither familiar with the terrain, nor the language.

But those are minor hiccups when one has a will, and a lazy script. Jyoti has both. She struggles with fear, overcomes it and manages to escape, even as she is imprisoned in dark dungeons, killing a couple of dreaded terrorists in the process. She takes as a hostage a high-ranking terrorist, Assad (Tsahi Halevi), and makes her way out of a den full of gun-toting men, along with a couple of other victims. Speaks volumes about the weaknesses of the so-called ‘dreaded’ terror outfit!

The second half is about a never-ending chase in the desert, Jyoti in her rickety car and the terrorists in their sophisticated all-terrain vehicles. She manages to dodge them, and even sprays bullets onto her tormentor, leaving him for dead. Assad meekly plays along with her antics, which seems to only build her up as the wilful survivor, but fails. Even the presence of Halevi, the ‘Fauda’ star, is not enough to stifle our yawns.

A brief respite follows as she reaches the camp of a UN peacekeeping unit. But the chase is soon resuscitated, and so is Assad, who turns up at the airport all hale and hearty to stop Jyoti from boarding the flight out of Mosul. Surprise, surprise! Rafeeq, who we had forgotten, turns up too. Yes, the same guy Jyoti befriended in the first half. He joins the terror outfit to save his life. That’s fine. But what’s not convincing is that he carries an envelope full of cash and a confession letter (about his love for Jyoti) to his mother in Pakistan even when he is a part of an operation.

Nushrratt Bharuccha tries hard to fit into the role written for her and does not disappoint as far as her action chops go. Nishant Dahiya as Rafeeq is endearing but the script soon writes him off. Pranay Meshram’s direction could have been crisper but we doubt that would have made much difference to this weak story. Even the dialogues are pretty dull. We were warned at the beginning by Rafeeq when he tells Jyoti not to think too much after she witnesses a child being blown up on the street. “This is Iraq, don’t think too much.” It seems Pranay Meshram took his own advice a tad too seriously while making this film.