The run-up to Independence Day inevitably brings a slew of patriotic, Pakistan-bashing films and series. This year’s batch includes Faruk Kabir’s Salakaar, in which an Indian undercover agent seemingly modelled on Ajit Doval single-handedly disrupts Pakistan’s nuclear programme.
The Hindi series directed by Faruk Kabir is out on JioHotstar. In 1978, Adhir Dayal (Naveen Kasturia) joins the Indian Embassy in Pakistan disguised as a cultural attache. Adhir reports to a buffoonish ambassador (Asif Ali Beg) who is a disgrace to the Indian Foreign Service.
Adhir’s real boss is in Delhi, to whom he sends reports about Pakistani’s new leader Zia Ullah (Mukesh Rishi). The dictator is building a nuclear bomb to counter India’s own nuclear test in 1974.
The programme, codenamed Project Kahuta, is apparently Pakistan’s worst-kept secret, revealed over drinks to Adhir by a disgruntled scientist. Adhir easily collects information on Project Kahuta, even standing right in front of the nuclear plant without being detected.
In 2025, undercover agent Mariam (Mouni Roy) is carrying on with the rogue Pakistani colonel Ashfaq (Surya Sharma). Ashfaq is too busy peering down Mariam’s decolletage to wonder why this very glam woman prefers spectacles to contact lenses. After Miriam learns about the existence of a new bomb, Adhir (now played by Purnendu Bhattacharya) leaps back into the game.
We get it. India’s security is paramount. There’s nothing like showing the Pakistani security establishment as thuggish clowns to get the chest to thump a bit louder.
Salakaar is more Mission: Impossible via Anil Sharma’s jingoistic movies than a John Le Carré novel. If an Indian spy can enter Zia’s household or triumph in a gunfight and still pass himself off as a lowly embassy employee, we are supposed to go with the flow.
Salakaar claims to be inspired by actual events. But the show is too dumbed-down, amateurish and contrived to be credible. The five-episode series doesn’t give any real sense of how espionage is conducted or how officials and leaders in both countries behave.
The show’s smartest idea is to cast Naveen Kasturia as Adhir, the salakaar, or consultant, who turns out to be a genius in regulation suits and spectacles.
Kasturia has the seriousness and substance to play an unassuming backroom operative. But making Adhir one up on 007 is as preposterous as showing Zia to be clueless about the goings-on under his nose. The lyrics of a song in the closing credits admiringly call Adhir “salakaar, superstar and mere yaar” (my buddy).
Many cooks have dreamed up this overspiced broth. The concept is by Mahir Khan. Sujay Bhattacharya, Srinivas Abrol and Swati Tripathi are credited as concept development writers. The story and screenplay are by Faruk Kabir and Spandan Mishra.
Mukesh Rishi’s Zia is modelled on his fanatical namesake. Although Rishi is over the top, he reveals shades of canniness in his dealings with Adhir. Surya Sharma as the Zia wannabe and Ashwath Bhatt as one of Zia’s cruel factotums are mainly there to speak bad Urdu and fulminate about India.
Only Naveen Kasturia survives the carnage, giving a fleeting indication of how brains trump brawn, even if the actual outcome was vastly different from the fiction peddled by the show.
