A man, holding a gun, chases a woman through the nooks and crannies of Belgrade. Finding himself in a cul-de-sac of sorts, he sees her pointing a gun back at him. “Put your gun down,” she barks at him. He, a seasoned special agent, lets go of his gun and promptly gets shot.
The law of probability points to the fact that if he had held on to the gun, there would be a 50 per cent chance of him being shot and a 50 per cent chance of him being able to shoot the woman in front of him. When he drops the gun, for no explainable reason, he makes that probability convert to a 100 per cent chance against him.
This is a scene from Citadel: Honey Bunny, which, as evident from this instance alone, is not a particularly smart show. Neither does it get the memo of being entertaining.
The Citadel Spyverse, chiefly represented by the ‘mothership’ English-language series front lined by Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden, has contributed zilch to the genre. Arriving last year, Citadel practically rehashed every theme and trope seen in every espionage thriller there ever has been and threw it at the audience, fervently hoping that at least some of it would stick. Nothing did. Apart from the fact that it was an unforgivable yawn.
The Italian spinoff, Citadel: Diana, released a few weeks ago with both low expectations and stakes, surprisingly fared better, impressing with its action set pieces and a confident turn from lead actor Matilda de Angelis.
Now where does that leave Citadel: Honey Bunny, the Indian addition to the universe? Given the names involved, Prime Video has bet big on the series with the hope that it would seamlessly blend the larger-than-life canvas of the Russo Brothers, the executive producers of the IP, with the signature filmmaking quirks of directors Raj & DK. That Varun Dhawan and Samantha headline the Hindi-language series, and has frequent Raj & DK collaborators Sita Menon (Shor in the City, Go Goa Gone, Farzi) and Sumit Arora (The Family Man, Guns & Gulaabs) on board set the bar high.
Citadel: Honey Bunny, unfortunately, oscillates between being deathly dull and predictably amateurish. There is nothing in this six-part series that feels fresh or original. Which, for the viewer, is both a big surprise and a huge letdown.
The first three episodes of the show are particularly pedestrian. That the action constantly switches between two timelines — 1992 and 2000, which is the present — would have worked if Honey Bunny had a compelling story that increased in intrigue and entertainment with each jump. That it doesn’t, makes this frequent to-and-fro quite an irritant.
The Bunny of Citadel: Honey Bunny is Varun, who works as a stuntman in ’90s Bollywood and moonlights as a secret agent working for an underground organisation. The Honey to Bunny is Samantha, an aspiring heroine relegated to thankless bit parts in commercial potboilers. A neglected princess of a state in southern India, Honey — born Hanimandakini — grew up with daddy issues. Daddy issues of a different kind torment Bunny too, who as an orphan, was adopted by a man who everyone refers to as ‘Baba’. That Baba is played by Kay Kay Menon is one of the rare high points of this series.
Kay Kay, who perfectly blends a caring, father-figure persona with a slimy, shifty-eyed duality of character, nurtures a group of young orphans — Bunny is his biggest ‘investment’ — to carry out everything from hit jobs to heists. These men are conditioned not to question Baba. The script may aspire to show them as emotionally manipulated, but the weak, often incoherent writing renders them downright stupid.
Baba’s aim is to lay his hands on a carefully guarded and much-sought-after programme called ‘Armada’ which, as he tells his team, will help him create a better, united world. The rag-tag bunch is peopled with spy genre stereotypes — the all brawn-all heart prototype (Chako, played by Shivankit Singh Parihar); the socially-awkward tech genius who seems to be the lovechild of Benji of Mission: Impossible and Q of James Bond and is played by Calcutta boy Soham Majumdar; KD, a cocky rulebreaker who operates mostly in the grey and is played by Saqib Saleem. He joins the team after the first few episodes.
The rival gang — whose identity is revealed somewhere in the middle of the series and is supposed to be its eureka moment, but can be gauged pretty early on by even those who haven’t been brought up on a diet of spy thrillers — also ticks off predictable boxes. Sikandar Kher plays a bargain-basement version of his Daulat from Aarya while Simran is the stiff upper lip-sporting, powersuit-clad commander-in-chief who is up against Baba.
Bunny takes along a jobless Honey for an operation who promptly decides that she wants to become an agent to “find purpose in life”. The script conveniently ignores the fact that agents operating at this level of risk and efficiency need years of training, knowledge and quick thinking to be sent to the field.
But because this is Samantha — Honey is better fleshed-out than Bunny, gets more screen time, is gifted with a photographic memory and is built in a way to elicit more sympathy — this ‘minor’ detail is brushed aside. Honey’s lame, single-line pitch for the job: “I am an exclusive piece”. Much like this one, Sumit Arora’s lines rarely land.
Honey joins the team, but a special operation in Belgrade changes everyone’s lives and paths. Eight years later — in the year 2000 — Honey, a single mother to precocious tween Nadia — must once again take on her adversaries in this game of life and death.
Those who have followed Citadel even superficially will remember that Priyanka’s character was called Nadia. At one point in that flagship series, she had mentioned that her father’s name was Rahi Gambhir, which happens to be Bunny’s ‘bhalo naam’. In this age of universes, cameos and crossovers — the Russos have been at the forefront of this trend with the Avengers films — this all but seems like a feeble attempt to tie the larger world of Citadel together.
The action scenes — guns, grenades, hand-to-hand combat and some cool choreographed fight sequences — are the best part of Citadel: Honey Bunny. But that is par for the course.
Varun, saddled with a role that doesn’t demand much, is earnest but Bunny should have been more layered. Samantha has the more author-backed part and she shows spark and spunk in certain scenes. The bee-stung lips and atrocious wig are an unwelcome distraction, though.
The biggest disappointment in Citadel: Honey Bunny is the lack of form of Raj & DK. The duo, known for their ability to make even the most inane immensely watchable, seem either disinterested or out of depth here. In The Family Man, they cheekily flipped the spy genre on its head and came up with one of the best Indian shows in recent times.
Despite being set in the ’90s, their unabashed homage to that age — seen so effectively in Guns & Gulaabs — is missing in Honey Bunny. Even when it comes up in Citadel — like video cassettes of Shaan and Gair, an operative named Agent Vinod — the attempt doesn’t have the desired impact. More often than not, the filmmakers seem encumbered by the demands of the Citadel template, which, to be honest, doesn’t really know what it wants to be or say.
