Film Review: RAAZI

Agreeing to disagree   

That Raazi is one of the most noncontroversial spy films to emerge, from this side of the border at least, can be validated by a statement Sehmat’s (Alia Bhatt) Pakistani army-officer husband Iqbal Syed (Vicky Kaushal) makes to his father Brigadier Syed (Shishir Sharma), “We would have done the same in her place”. This is when he discovers his wife to be an Indian spy.

Co-scripted by director Meghna Gulzar from Retd Lt Commander Harinder Sikka’s true story ‘Calling Sehmat’, Raazi tells the story of a girl, barely out of her teens, pushed into marriage by her terminally ill father Hidayat (Rajit Kapur) — a Kashmiri Indian spy — who’s convinced his friend Brig Syed of his loyalties towards West Pakistan: the story begins months before the 1971 war.
Trained, but not professionally by her Indian handler Khalid Mir (Jaideep Ahlawat), Alia displays her emotions well and seems the perfect choice to play the nubile Sehmat, who loves her LP-playing, jazz-loving husband but her ‘watan’ even more. The first half is unhurried as Sehmat is shown as ‘the eyes and ears’ of India. Later, the film has its tense moments when viewers are shown the perils she endures during her mission.

The 1971 war was a double-flank one with India having had to counter both West and East Pakistan. Meghna too tackles both flanks — maintaining the credibility of the story and goings-on on the screen while extracting accomplished performances from its little-known supporting cast, all of whom play crucial roles. Arif Zakaria as Abdul, the Syeds’ loyal retainer; Soni Razdan essaying Alia’s real-life mother on screen and Ashwatt Bhatt (looking and sounding uncannily like yesteryear Gujarati actor Krishnakant) as Iqbal’s brother Mehboob.

The music by Shankar-Ehsan-Loy is good with ‘Aye watan’ being the standout song. Besides the long runtime, the script too does have its weak spots but it’s largely a film which our neighbours across the border should find unobjectionable.