Aiyaary movie review: The men in army fail to shine through the muddled up plot

Directed By: Neeraj Pandey
Produced By: Shital Bhatia, Dhaval Gada, Jayantilal Gada, Karan Shah
Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Manoj Bajpayee, Rakul Preet Singh, Pooja Chopra
Duration: 2 Hours 40 Minutes
Bollywood Bubble Rating: 2/5

After delivering taut thrillers like ‘A Wednesday’ and ‘Special 26’, hopes are high from his new outing ‘Aiyaary’, but does it manage to convey it’s message efficiently? Let’s unravel in the movie review…

‘Aiyaary’ (which means ultimate trickery), is about a young army officer named Captain Jay Bakshi (Sidharth Malhotra) who goes rogue with a hefty purpose to expose the dirty secrets of the military forces. His mentor Col. Abhay Singh (Manoj Bajpayee) is an incorruptible army man who heads a covert cell and guns down traitors. Ever since Major Jay Bakshi absconds, Col. Singh has only one mission, to hunt him down. Here begins a cat and mouse chase although with loads of unwarranted confusion.

While Col. Singh believes himself to be the smarter one, Major Bakshi outsmarts him and he isn’t alone, a nifty hacker in the form of Sonia helps him. Bakshi wants to expose the deadly misgivings of a retired army man played by Kumud Mishra who has grown corrupt and earns help from a businessman played by Adil Hussain. Does he succeed or does Bakshi manage to expose him? Does Singh manage to catch hold of his protégé gone rogue? Too many questions that could have been dealt with methodically, but everything goes down the drain with poor execution and unnecessarily over explained and stretched portions. The entire plot gets lost and confused with too many sequences jumbled up together which right till the end remain a mystery.

Manoj Bajpayee is the only standout in this muddled up, almost three hours long thriller. Sidharth Malhotra is decent while Rakul Preet Singh is fairly okay. Pooja Chopra is barely seen whereas all senior bunch of actors like Anupam Kher, Naseeruddin Shah, Kumud Mishra and Adil Hussain are utterly wasted with no clear character sketches drawn. Naseeruddin Shah’s dialogue delivery seems like a hangover from ‘A Wednesday’ whereas Anupam Kher is totally wasted. The only character that makes sense is Colonel Abhay Singh and Bajpayee rightfully delivers.

Overall, ‘Aiyaary’ is a complex and too stretched thriller with no clear direction of the happenings. Clearly avoidable.

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Prajakta Ajgaonkar

Passionate about writing, and a Bollywood lover, she is all that is sweet and endearing! She desires to put her best foot forward in everything that she does and loves to help anyone who’s in need.