To fully enjoy the pleasures that Apoorva Lakhia's latest, one either needs to have a fondness for self-flagellation or a really vicarious sense of humour. I thus, hereby confess that the latter is a quality I possess in ample qualities, and henceforth I have to say that I had a huge blast watching Mission Istanbul, which itself had plenty of them.Mission Istanbul belongs to the esteemed genre of deliciously bad films such as Jaani Dushman, Shakalaka Boom Boom, Aitraaz; or what I prefer to call the 'So bad, it's brilliant' genre. Have a wicked sense of humour and a taste for cheese (no, not the eating kind) and I doubt that you'd be bored for a minute.
Apoorva Lakhia belongs to that breed of filmmakers who think that making their lead characters walk in slow motion towards the camera is like, the coolest thing ever. It's only natural that one looks forward to a lot of corny 'entertainment' and unintentional laughs in this film- and with a name like that, what else can one expect? This one's a Turkey if there ever was one, and to relish it, you've got to be in the mood for Christmas.
In that respect, Mission Istanbul is far from disappointing. If watching Zayed Khan play a news reporter itself isn't enough to crack you up (he looked rather strained trying to pull a straight face reading news), trust me- there's much, much more.
Vivek Oberoi plays a Turkish Commando called Rizwan Khan with a bad hairdo and smirk permanently pasted on his noggin, while Nikitin Dheer plays Ghazni, the head of the 'controversial' news channel Al Johara (Er, did that ring a bell?) whose idea of office-wear includes bowties and multicolored plastic flowers stuck onto coat lapels.
Featured also are look-alikes of Osama Bin Laden, George Bush and a wannabe Lara Croft with too much red lipstick and too little expression (played by Shweta Bhardwaj).
There are unexpected revelations- (Spoilers, if you please) Al Johara is a terrorist organization, Osama is actually dead- and unexpected homoeroticism- Ghazni as a liking discussing work with journalists and terrorists with all of them clad in towels.
Vivek Oberoi and Zayed Khan try very hard to look cool blowing up buildings, bashing up guys and mouthing priceless lines that even includes a tagline for a soft-drink (this is by far the worst attempt at product placement to ever be seen in the history of cinema) but can only manage to make clowns of themselves. Shabbir Ahluwalia and Nikitin Dheer shout and break things and Shriya Saran keeps emitting loud sobs and sighs.
This movie doesn't deserve a review, folks- and before this piece becomes even more incoherent than it already is, I must sign off and attempt to undo the brain damage.
Let's just hope Lakhia doesn't decide to make a sequel and call it (gulp) MI:2. Now, that would definitely become- well- far too much of a good thing.
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