Ulajh - movie review

A lady who belongs to an elite family of bureaucrats, who have made their career in Foreign office department, follows in her father's footsteps and finds herself promoted as the Deputy head of Indian embassy in UK, much to the surprise of her own relatives and chagrin of her colleagues. She finds both support and animosity in equal measure at her new place. She meets a charming guy who takes her out for fancy dinner and is found to be the chef of her favorite restaurant. She falls for him and the next day when she meets him at an embassy party, he begins to blackmail her with videos of their intimate moments. She is torn apart between duty for her country, bad name for her family that will eventually screw up her dad's career as well in the ministry and fear of getting caught. She obliges to the threats made and ends up getting two of her colleagues killed and several other spy members exposed in foreign land. Some how she gains some perspective when all of water goes over head and decides enough is enough. She joins hand with her most vocal critic at the embassy and hunts down the blackmailer who is plotting to assassinate the prime minister of neighbouring country on a peace mission visit to India. As the plot unravels, it becomes clear that its the very own colleagues and seniors within her own circles who are behind all this and in the end she manages to get them all exposed and thwarts the attempt on the PM. A shadow agency approaches her to recruit, considering her exploits and end credits begin to roll.

The storyline is almost similar to that of a Sidney sheldon novel, where the new American presidents, recruits a lady from public for his people-to-people outreach program and sends her to a communist country. Being a novice and having a not-so-friendly crowd, how she performs as the ambassador of US and ends up defeating the villain forms the rest of the plot. That book came almost 2,3 decades back i guess. The story was very interesting to read and the premise was kind of novel for its time. The same story, being made now with almost similar setup doesn't just feel dated, but carbon-dated!! Jhanvi kapoor (srideviyoda ponnu) does a decent job and rest of the cast have done what they could do best for its not just the scenes, but the entire story can be done in sleepwalk mode!! As a script, if published as a book, it might've turned out to be a cheaper flop as compared to the cost of making it for silver screen!!

P.S: Wifey loves spy thriller genre movies. Apdi ennathaan intha padathula irukunu paaka arambichathula intha post thaan michcham!!