Hushed whispers throwing around words like “strategy” and “leverage”. Sharp suits — and occasionally a crisp cotton sari — making their way through the corridors of power. Spies. Super agents. Enemy attacks. Intelligence failures. Betrayal, blackmail, bloodshed. There is nothing in Ulajh that one hasn’t seen in a film of this genre before — and by that we mean espionage fiction/ political thriller. It is the treatment and certain themes — like a woman not only breaking into the male-dominated bastion of the Foreign Service but also clawing her way to the top — packaged in a slick, sharp template that makes Ulajh watchable.
But that is only in the first hour. In Half Two, Ulajh is undone by the weight of its own ambition. The plot loses itself in a quagmire of extended talky scenes and Abbas-Mustan lite twists and turns, reducing itself to a convoluted plot. In short, Ulajh decides to live up to its title.
Ulajh, directed by Sudhanshu Saria, who pens the story with Parveez Shaikh and has Atika Chohan pitching in with the dialogues, starts off with promise. Young diplomat Suhana Bhatia (Janhvi Kapoor) secures an enviable post in the Indian embassy in London. Her becoming the youngest-ever deputy High Commissioner invites sexist office sniggers and in what is a smart way to meld reel with real, comes accompanied with loose chatter about privilege and nepotism. Suhana’s dad (Adil Hussain) is, after all, a much-feted diplomat. “Diplomatic instincts run in your blood,” a smiling Suhana is told by someone pretty early on in the film.
Those instincts, however, take a not-so-strategic timeout when Suhana starts dating Nakul (Gulshan Devaiah), a Michelin-star chef. A few moments — and one blink-and-you miss make-out sesh later — Suhana finds herself being blackmailed with a sex tape by her would-be lover who turns out to be an enemy plant. She now has to leak out top-secret information in order to ensure that her private moments are not made public. Thankfully, there is no attempt at a RAW-ISI love story. That’s best left to Salman Khan and his Tiger films.
As a hyperventilating Suhana goes against her patriotic grain to save her family’s honour, director Saria throws in more than what the audience can chew. It ends in Suhana foiling a bid to assassinate the peacenik Prime Minister of Pakistan (Rushad Rana sports a constant beatific smile). And a last-minute thought of spinning off a potential franchise.
To be fair, Ulajh isn’t half as bad as Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha, the other Bollywood release of the week. In fact, its players — if not the plot as a whole — redeem the film when it gets trapped in its own confused and chaotic world. Janhvi, a reliable performer as she has proved over the last few films, effectively conveys the transition from helpless quandary to raging resilience. Gulshan Devaiah expertly brings dread and deceit to his two-faced act. Veterans Adil Hussain and Rajesh Tailang are in their element and Roshan Mathew — that moment of him breaking into a rant in Malayalam is pure gold — is solid. They all do well despite the writing giving them short shrift. Meiyang Chang is hit the hardest, embodying a role that demands that he only glare and glower, till a bullet ends his
(and our) misery.
Ulajh would have been a much better film if it didn’t fall prey to contrivance and staginess. The last few minutes throw in more than a hint for at least one more film in this world. We are all for it as long as Ulajh doesn’t make it its mission — ‘should it wish to accept it’ — to take its title seriously.