Baby

An intelligence unit officially does not exist: no records, no recognition, and if it fails nobody will claim it. Ajay is its man in the field. He follows the trail of a planned attack on India from Nepal to Istanbul and on to Saudi Arabia, and the time gets shorter at every stop. The subject is not heroism but how unacknowledged work isolates a person. Ajay's scenes with his family are more uncomfortable than the operations; he cannot tell them what he does, and the film declines to turn that into a speech about sacrifice. The form takes the genre work seriously. The action is not inflated, and a long fight in a hotel room is the best sequence in the film, resolved almost entirely through physical effort. One detail of the production stands out: the character of the female agent, played by Taapsee Pannu, caught on so strongly that a film devoted to her alone was made two years later and released as Naam Shabana. A supporting character producing its own feature is not common in Indian cinema. Akshay Kumar leads, with Anupam Kher and Kay Kay Menon in the cast. Neeraj Pandey directs. Who it is for: viewers who like spy thrillers and are curious about Indian genre film. Who it is not for: anyone who will question its politics; the film draws its enemy in one dimension.