Reviews

If I had to summarise the movie in one word, I would say it's 'forced.'

From head to toe, from the establishing shot to the end scene, from action to the placement of songs, everything was forced and outright bad.

5 minutes into the movie and I knew I had been made. That Shan with all his cynicism about other filmmakers and their tv-like films, with his image of the true film man, had fooled me dearly.

Who writes such childish dialogues? Who writes such a bad story? It was all so bad that I felt embarrassed that for some foreign cast members, this was their introduction to a Pakistani film.

It was as if a child directed that movie. A child who had just discovered slow-mo, hand-held camera sequences (or whatever that blurry crap was), and background music. Half the time, the background music was so loud and ill-placed that you won't even hear the dialogues.

The movie was so ill-planned that Urdu dubbing seemed like an after thought as half the characters were running their lips for English dialogues yet the voice coming out spoke Urdu. Urdu or English, the dialogues was plainly bad.

The only saving grace for the movie were its songs. Not their placement, not their picturization, but the melodies.

I am simply surprised that Zarrar is by the same storyteller who, in past, has given us a film like Zilleh Shah. Shan needs to stop directing himself because he isn't doing himself any favors there.

Man, the potential the idea had, yet...

I would directly start by saying that the movie was utter disappointment and disgrace to spy-action-romance genre. Story was terrible specially in the first half, by terrible I mean lacking in content, illogical and too many unnecessary characters. I guess the basic selling point in writer or director's mind was 'bashing ISI as much as you can.' It's pity that such a film got a huge box office success because I am afraid it will only encourage others to follow the same trend. I mean I understand that its a movie on a RAW James bond and one must not expect anything good for ISI in the movie but guys do it with some logic. Agent Vinod was way better than this. Acting on the side of Salman was just average as usual, Katrina Kaif is Bollywood's Kristen Stewart, no expressions what so ever. And yeah, girl if you have fighting skills then what happens to you when you confront ISI guys. The same illogical unnecessary drama to end first half. Acting on behalf of Roshan Seth as professor Kidwai was outstanding, I guess no one could match him acting wise in the movie. The movie was lacking proper research a big time, Spoken Urdu was as bad as Kaif's real life Hindi skills. I mean guys if you are making a spy movie, do it correctly. Put some class, style, story, logical twist and turns. Action was good I must say, but it didn't look as compact as in Bourne series or even in MIs. Overall, I regret that after successfully avoiding Salman Khan films from Ready on wards, why did I trust Salman again. In a nutshell, movie was too scattered and illogical. Don't waste your time, not recommended.

Let me start by saying that I am a great fan of Bourne series and always look for films to get the similar enjoyment that I derive from that series. It's sort of a benchmark for me in spy-thrillers. When I saw the trailer of Safe House, I was impressed and was so tempted that I downloaded it in 15 minutes and was watching it by the 20th minute. The film started rather slowly but that was fine, most films do. there were, however, some points in the middle and the second half of the film where I literally yawned. Being a Bourne film, I really loved the action sequences, they were fast, logical and impact leaving ones. The story, however, I won't say straight but rather conventional, we have seen the similar thing in spy-thrillers, tinker tailor soldier spy being the last such film I saw. Acting was awesome, at least on the part of Denzel Washington. Story could have been more compact, thrilling and could have a good ending.. I heard they are working on a sequel and hope that they figure all those low points, specially a good start to cover up the low ending they gave to this film in that sequel. Overall, a good film to watch but only if you have two long free hours.