IB71 Review: Vidyut Jammwal's Middling Spy Drama Is Not Without Its Moments

Cast: Anupam Kher, Vidyut Jammwal, Dev, Dalip Tahil

Director: Sankalp Reddy

Rating: Two and a half (out of 5)

A war film that is more an espionage thriller than a battlefield drama, IB71, directed and co-written by Sankalp Reddy (who made The Ghazi Attack six years ago), presents an account of “true events” masterminded by an Indian intelligence agent to scuttle a planned Pakistani operation against India on the eastern front during the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war.

Fronted by Vidyut Jammwal, who is also one of the producers of the film, IB71 is sparing in its dependence on action sequences, preferring a relatively sedate approach to the exploits of an intrepid IB operative, Dev, who hatches a daring hijack plot in order to land in Pakistan with a band of Indian secret agents.

The Ghazi Attack was an underwater action film that revolved around a submarine that mysteriously sank in the Bay of Bengal during the 1971 Indo-Pak war. Parts of IB71 play out on a decommissioned airplane that is ready for a specific spy mission days ahead of the same military conflict.

Secret agent Dev's plan is to give India a pretext to block its airspace and thwart enemy plans to ferry men and ammunition to East Pakistan with Chinese assistance. The man is single-minded in his focus on the job at hand. He has no time for romance or other distractions.

IB71 is a two-hour film has no lip-synched songs. But it takes its own sweet time to get off the ground. The first hour is a veritable jigsaw puzzle – confounding and unconvincing. A great deal happens on the screen in this part of the film – Jammwal's steely spy sneaks into a Pakistani airfield with an assumed identity, gathers crucial intelligence and discovers that India is in danger of being attacked in ten days.

In a race against time, Dev heads to Kashmir with a fellow-spy, enlists two young Kashmiri liberation warriors, including a 17-year-old boy Qasim

(Vishal Jethwa). It is, however, hard to figure what on earth he is exactly up to. We do at best have a fuzzy notion of the exact nature of the spy operation. The stunning images of the slow-clad Valley help the audience keep itself occupied until some degree of clarity begins to dawn.

It is only in the second half, when Dev and his team are airborne with the two young Kashmiri radicals on their rickety passenger machine, that IB71 begins to gather something that feels like momentum. Less talk and more action are always the best policy when a film flies into a haze.

That is not to say that IB71 has no redeeming features at all. It definitely does. By far the best thing about the film is its surprisingly uncluttered storytelling in the second half. Like the aircraft, the film is low on fuel but it manages to stay afloat till such time that it can contemplate a safe landing

The screenplay stays firmly fixed on the drama that unfolds in constricted spaces – on the plane, inside the cockpit and finally in a hotel and its compound. The action that takes place outdoors has an appreciably different timbre given the stunning beauty of the landscape.

Part of the fault for the marked difference between the two halves of the film lies partly with the script, and partly with the editing. But the final moments of IB71, no matter how facile they may seem, serve to somewhat offset the incoherence that mars the first half.

The breathtakingly lovely Kashmir Valley vistas are captured in all their wintry, snow-covered glory by director of photography Gnana Sekhar V.S. The lush visuals create an ambience that provides a contrast to a thin and unflashy storyline.

Jammwal's hunky presence is mined to shore up the film when it tends to flounder despite its unwavering adherence to the plot and its eschewal (for the most part) of cheap thrills and other convenient concessions. While the lead actor steers clear of the excesses that his action hero persona often triggers, he cashes in on every opportunity to peddle his on-screen invincibility.

A boat chase on the Dal Lake and a group fight involving him and his IB mates pitted against Pakistani security men – there isn't too much else in the film by way of explicit action – Jammwal does what he is there for – take the lead when danger looms, fight his way out, and emerge largely unscathed.

Anupam Kher, cast as the Intelligence Bureau chief from whom the hero takes orders, has a few scenes that allow him to make his presence felt. But once these are out of the way, he is reduced to pacing up and down in his office, reacting to news streaming in from many, many miles away of Dev's daredevilry.

The strangest treatment is reserved for Dalip Tahil. He plays Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto but is given no lines to speak. If the idea is to convey the insignificance of the Pakistan head of state in the larger scheme of things that has been set in motion by a gutsy Indian secret agent, it definitely isn't a good one. It not only amounts to sidelining a veteran actor, but also to frittering away the opportunity to whip up some drama.

The Pakistani officials in IB71 are, as one would expect, etched out with very broad strokes although it must be said that the film does not take recourse to overt jingoism. Hobby Dhaliwal. playing a highly stressed-out high-up in the Pakistani military establishment, and Ashwath Bhatt in the role of the ISI chief occasionally rise above the limitations of a screenplay that yields a serviceable spy thriller that is surprisingly shorn of massy elements.

IB71 leaves one with the nagging feeling that it could have been a much better film has the writing been a less of the by-the-numbers kind. But even as a middling spy drama, it is not without its moments.

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