New Delhi:
It hits the bottom working all proper however the mission of sustaining the momentum is an abject failure. A lot of what Citadel: Honey Bunny makes an attempt to do proves means an excessive amount of for a script that, even at its greatest, can solely laboriously inch its means ahead – and backwards. Citadel: Honey Bunny is an Indian spinoff of Amazon Prime Video’s Citadel Spyverse that was birthed final yr in an espionage thriller collection fronted by Priyanka Chopra and Richard Madden and government produced by the Russo brothers. Whereas it has its share of motion, it runs low on intrigue and suspense.
The collection doesn’t precisely go down in flames however neither does it have us holding our breath as its motion set items explode on display. It tries arduous. The trouble exhibits and mars the expertise.
The Russo brothers are on board once more, this time alongside one other profitable filmmaking pair – government producers and administrators Raj & DK – however the fare that they produce with Varun Dhawan and Samantha enjoying the titular brokers makes heavy climate of the style.
The collection performs out in two timelines – 1992 and 2000. Within the earlier part, it has a sequence during which Bollywood stuntman Bunny asserts that the best way actors die in Hindi movies is faux and proceeds to indicate Honey how dying happens in actual life when a person is shot.
The varied methods of dropping lifeless that Bunny demonstrates in jest are strewn all throughout Citadel: Honey Bunny because the motion alternates between India (Bombay/Mumbai and Nainital) and Belgrade. None of them look both actual or startling.
In motion films and net exhibits, when the protagonists shoot, they hit the goal. That’s not often the case when their adversaries return fireplace. The latter all the time handle to go means off the mark. Issues are not any completely different in Citadel: Honey Bunny.
Irrespective of how usually Honey – she appears extra weak than Bunny to being within the firing line – is wounded, she is shortly again on her ft with renewed vigour. The vitality that Samantha lends to the character doesn’t fairly discover its means into the collection as an entire.
Varun Dhawan’s boyish manner tends to undermine the armour of invincibility that Bunny is meant to sport in essentially the most tough of conditions. The character has no layers and that after all is not the actor’s fault.
Working with common collaborators Sita Menon (Shor within the Metropolis, Go Goa Gone, Farzi) and Sumit Arora (The Household Man, Weapons & Gulaabs), Raj & DK search to create a worldwide context for this Indian tour into the spy universe that has been struggling to discover a regular docking area within the style constellation that additionally contains an Italian foray, Citadel: Diana.
The motion scenes that the administrators mount in Belgrade, together with an thrilling chase sequence by means of the streets of the town, have their moments. They’re sadly too few and much between.
Because the plot unfolds and the story strikes between the early Nineties and the flip of the millennium, there may be a lot discuss of making a greater, extra peaceable world and controlling the levers of world energy. That’s as cliched as they arrive with the principal wrestle hinging on making certain that the important thing to world domination doesn’t fall into the flawed palms.
The confrontations happen between an underground company that Bunny works for when he is not performing stunts for film stars and the brokers of Citadel led by a stoic, neatly attired-Zooni (Simran).
The six-episode collection seems to be in useless for an emotional core by using its quieter moments to discover household and friendship, love and loyalty, betrayal and ethical dilemmas. These parts of the collection are all the time drowned out by the din generated by Honey and Bunny’s combat for survival in a slippery world the place one false step might show to be the final.
“I all the time survive. I’m an unique piece,” Honey preens when Bunny expresses scepticism about her potential to make it as a spy. Her cockiness stems from the truth that she, an aspiring film actress decreased to enjoying bit elements, not solely wants a function in life however can also be foresworn to defending her precociously robust school-going daughter, Nadia (Kashvi Majmundar).
Not that the little woman wants any hand-holding. Nadia is in spite of everything destined for greater issues, grand glimpses of which Priyanka Chopra offered in 2023’s Citadel. This collection tells the pre-origin story of agent Nadia Sinh, who at one level had revealed that her father is Rahi Gambhir. That’s Bunny’s identify.
In 1992, Bunny, who has lived down a tragedy and located a “Baba” determine in seasoned undercover agent Guru (Kay Kay Menon) after years of residing in an orphanage, affords the struggling Honey a one-off job. It’s fraught with hazard however the woman, working from an sad life in a South Indian royal palace, has no possibility however to leap proper in.
That leap is a one-way road. As she travels down that path, she leads to Belgrade in pursuit of a scientist Raghu Rao (Thalaivasal Vijay), who’s believed to be the important thing participant in a worldwide surveillance programme known as Challenge Talwar. Secrets and techniques tumble forth in the middle of the encounter however issues don’t fairly finish as meant.
Eight years later, Honey and Bunny’s paths cross once more. This time round, the warfare they wage turns into primarily private. Each Nadia and her mom are on the run and Bunny should discover them earlier than Zooni’s hitman Shaan (Sikandar Kher) and Guru’s unfastened cannon Kedar (Salim Saqeeb) can nook them.
The duo isn’t out of the woods as they search for locations to cover. Honey and Nadia are on the radar of ‘dangerous males’, that’s the time period the mom makes use of to inform Nadia that it’s time swap to ‘play’ mode. That’s the solely strategy to keep out of hurt’s means. The motion ultimately boils all the way down to Honey and Bunny forming a staff once more to keep off the hazard that Nadia faces.
In each timelines, Bunny operates with tech geek Ludo (Soham Majumdar) and Chako (Shivankit Parihar), an intrepid hunk who has within the interim grow to be a household man, on his aspect. The trio ventures into fight all weapons blazing.
Honey and Bunny’s pasts transcend 1992 and the collection would have accomplished effectively to provide the viewers a bit of extra of what the 2 protagonists endured as youngsters. Each search to erase reminiscences of the troubles they’ve needed to deal with rising up lonely and sad.
Their backstories are dedicated to transient flashbacks that serve to only about clarify the mindsets that they’ve carried into maturity, whereas the collection squarely focuses on the spunky little woman who they need to defend in any respect prices from rival brokers.
Citadel: Honey Bunny has two aspects to it. One centres on the conventions of the spy thriller, which Raj & DK so skillfully turned on their head in The Household Man.
The opposite exudes the kind of retro Bollywood potboiler spirit that the duo without delay celebrated and lampooned in Weapons & Gulaabs. On the previous rely, they take no dangers. On the latter too, they maintain again.
Aiming at a transferring goal isn’t a good suggestion. It’s hardly stunning that Citadel: Honey Bunny is a misfire. It misses the bull’s eye by miles.
( headline and story edited by our workers and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
