London Confidential: A Thrill-Less Thriller
Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
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By Linus Garg
First publised on 2020-09-20 20:05:56
About the Author
Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
View all posts by this Author
London Confidential (now streaming on Zee5) is the first mainstream film conceived and shot during the pandemic and it tries to cash in on hot topics (viruses and the Indo-China standoff) to weave a story of espionage and counter-espionage with the attendant informers, moles and betrayals. But despite the short running time (one hour and seventeen minutes), or maybe because of it, it fails to do justice to the genre, with too many loose ends and a climax that does not bring the viewer to the edge of his or her seat. The plus point is that the film avoids jingoism or Chinese-bashing and runs the story around the spies and their work.
There are rumours that the Chinese have developed another virus, deadlier than Covid-19 and it is spreading at the Indo-China border. Obviously, they want to hide the news from the world. The story opens with a virology conference scheduled to happen in London in 7 days time. An Indian agent, Biren Ghosh, has contacted a delegate in the Chinese team who is willing to expose the nation and its wild ways in the conference. But he goes missing and is later found dead. The Indians suspect there is a mole in their ranks. They want to find him or her out but without bloodshed as the MI6 cannot be involved otherwise the operation would become a major diplomatic issue.
The rest of the story revolves around how the RAW team in London, Uma Kulkarni (Mouni Roy), Arjun (Purab Kohli) and M try to track the mole and how Uma tries to make sense of the painting that Biren sent her in his last message before he was killed. But what could have been an interesting and edge-of-the-seat espionage thriller is reduced to a stale story. Although the team works to a plan and tries to identify suspects and cross them out one by one, it is done childishly. It is inconceivable that Indian embassy staffers in London would not find out that people are following them or get trapped so easily. The short running time perhaps did not allow director Kanwal Sethi and writer S Hussan Zaidi to develop the characters or their relationships, but adding 10 minutes and more meat to the story would have definitely helped.
While the story claims to have been set in London during the pandemic, after the initial, almost matter of fact, show of restrictions in place (masks, social distancing) the film shows people going about their business, partying or visiting shady casinos and pleasure houses as if there was no virus around. The acting, too, is just about competent with no actor making a serious attempt to infuse life into the proceedings. Mouni Roy, with her baby bump, and Purab Kohli, with his stale shopkeeper jokes, go about their business as if they want to get over with it fast. Kulraj Randhawa as the Indian ambassador in London has great screen presence but does not do justice to the pivotal role. The film, though, is shot beautifully and manages to capture London in many hues.
