Shivam Nair’s The Diplomat has the tagline “A true hero needs no weapon.” Taglines often lie. And what else is diplomacy but dissembling elevated to an art form?
Nair’s Hindi film is based on the real-life case of Uzma Ahmed from 2017. Ahmed, an Indian woman, fled from what she claimed was a hellish marriage to a Pakistani man and took refuge in the Indian Embassy in Islamabad. Delicate manoeuvring by the envoy JP Singh paved the way for Ahmed’s return to India.
Ritesh Shah’s screenplay fashions Singh’s handling of Uzma’s plight into a suspense thriller. While there’s actually no mystery to Uzma Ahmed’s fate, Nair’s focused staging and Kunal Walve’s tight editing ensure that sweat forms on the brow.
Uzma (Sadia Khateeb) makes a dramatic appearance at the Islamabad embassy, claiming torture and worse by her Pashtun husband Tahir (Jagjeet Sandhu). JP Singh (John Abraham) sets into motion sensitive negotiations with his Pakistani counterpart, which spymaster Malik (Ashwath Bhatt) tries to thwart at every turn.
This is Pakistan, where nothing is what it seems and anything that can go wrong will – Singh’s resigned air, Malik’s near-comical villainy and the savagery of Tahir and his cohort represent this film’s idea of a kind of domestic terrorism at work in the much-reviled neighbouring country.
Revathy has a cameo as Sushma Swaraj, who was the External Affairs minister at the time. Sharib Hashmi has a minor role as an easily frightened embassy staffer. But the main action is divided between Sadia Khateeb and John Abraham – the latter clinical, controlled and all the more effective for it. Jagjeet Sandhu is excellent as the suitably scary, unhinged Tahir.
Given the inevitable outcome, the 137-minute movie could have benefitted from some ruthless tightening. There are moments when Singh resembles the average Hindi film hero. Short-cuts taken to rush the plot along don’t always give a true picture of how diplomacy works.
But by and large, The Diplomat delivers the goods with the same efficiency with which its nattily attired hero plucks Uzma out of the clutches of her tormentors. As a simplistic film about a complex negotiation into a tricky case, The Diplomat fulfils its stated brief.
