Director: Anushree Mehta

Cast: Radhika Apte, Rajesh Sharma, Sumeet Vyas, Angana Roy, Laboni Sarkar, Satish Badal, Amrita Chattopadhyay, Indrasish Roy, Biswajit Chakraborty, Roshini Bhattacharya, Saheb Chatterjee

Available On: Zee5

Duration: 1 Hour 47 Minutes

‘Mrs Undercover’: Story

Radhika Apte plays a spy who is suddenly called on the job after ten years of staying undercover as a housewife named Durga. In the ten years, staying true to her cover, she remained a caring housewife married to a patriarchal husband almost forgetting that she was after all an undercover spy. Will she now be able to get back to being an active agent? Will she remember her training? Will she be able to hide it from her husband? Will she finally expose the entire undercover mission to the villains? Well, to know all that, you’ll have to watch the movie.

‘Mrs Undercover’: Performances

Radhika Apte pulls off a rather easy performance with utter ease. She is funny, and cocky, and shows her belligerent side when need be. For an actress of her calibre, there wasn’t something that needed her to push herself out of her limits. It seemed that she could have breezed this performance even in her sleep.

Rajesh Sharma is actually the one who has put in a noteworthy act. His dialogues make you guffaw and his different looks and avatars are simply too hilarious.

Sumeet Vyas was a wasted opportunity. It’s good to see that he is not doing those chocolate boy roles anymore and is doing villainous characters in projects like ‘Jaanbaaz Hindustan Ke’ and ‘Mrs Undercover’. Unlike ‘Jaanbaaz Hindustan Ke’, he wasn’t given that space to explore and open his wings up. Excepting that initial car murder scene, there is barely any instance in ‘Mrs Undercover’ where his psycho-villainous side comes to the fore. In ‘Jaanbaaz Hindustan Ke’ there was that monologue in the final episode which made his performance get all the applause and justified his crazy villainous behaviour. Sadly, that was missing in ‘Mrs Undercover’.

Saheb Chatterjee was a total waste as well. He is a very popular Bengali actor, and for him to do such a small role felt like an underutilization of his talents.

The other supporting cast was barely there to even demand a mention.

‘Mrs Undercover’: Script, Direction & Technical Aspects

Abir Sengupta and Anushree Mehta’s script is the low point of the film. There was scope for a lot more to be done. The character of the mother-in-law could have been put to use a lot more, considering she had such a great bond with her daughter-in-law. Then the character of the others in the special force was not explored at all. The calmness about killing a rogue agent was just too shallow. To add to all of this, the climax was terrible. You can’t show a Chief Minister of a state telling the cops to back off so that an Indian housewife can teach a lesson to a deadly international terrorist. It shouldn’t have come down to just showing brute force and a man vs woman fight. The female agent had already defeated the international terrorist with her wit and intelligence – wasn’t that enough? Is brain power less than the strength of the hand? In trying to showcase a women empowerment thing, the messaging is going wrong. In order to show empowered women, you don’t have to show them as physically well-built and able to take on a man twice their size. They can easily be empowered in other crafts of life and using those the women could have defeated or caught?the international terrorist.

However, Mehta and Sengupta did manage to get the tone of the comedy angle perfectly. The bonding between the undercover agent and her boss, the bonding between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law, the messaging of a senior citizen coming to a college course wanting to start a new business at that age – all these were showcased really well in the writing.

Anushree Mehta’s direction was decent. However, the story was very linear and simple to execute. It didn’t have too much of over-the-top or very difficult sequences to show. So, sticking to basics, helped get this film come together perfectly.

Abhimanyu Sengupta’s cinematography indeed was a highlight of the film. The way he has shown the city of Kolkata is beautiful. Not many cinematographers have the guts to show Kolkata and not show Victoria Memorial and Howrah Bridge in every second scene. He has managed to shoot the story in the lanes and bylanes of the city, thereby showing its diversity, not just in its populace, but also in the income differences of the different localities. However, I did miss the usage of overhead drone shots, which could have actually given more depth and thrill to some of the chase and fast-paced sequences.

Sandeep Kurup, in order to keep the film under two hours, has edited out quite a lot. To be fair, it could have been the director’s call as well, but the two together could have decided to showcase a bit more depth into the other characters. The other characters?– the mother-in-law, the agent who rode the taxi, and the Kolkata police officer who gets implicated wrongfully as the terrorist –?could have been shown a lot more in order to make the story feel a lot more well-balanced.

Kshitij Tarey’s background score was nothing to rave about. However, the songs by Amit Sawant, Ankit Shah and Abhinav Shekhar have?quite good?longevity. ‘Saanson Se Judi’ is definitely a keeper in all playlists. Then the ‘Durga Mahakaali’ and ‘Durga Naari’ songs are surely going to find a place in the various festival song playlists etc.

‘Mrs Undercover’: Can Kids Watch It?

Yes

Outlook’s Verdict

‘Mrs Undercover’ did have great potential, however, lacklustre writing especially the climax killed the entire fun of the movie. Baring aside a few?good laughs between Radhika Apte and Rajesh Sharma, the film is not worth the time spent. Overall, it’s an Average Watch. I am going with 2 stars.