Berlin movie review: Spy thrillers which are as intelligent as the intelligence they talk about, are far and few. Berlin is an honest step in the right direction. For starters – dropping agency names, firing guns and saving the world from impending doom isn’t how the world of espionage works. James Bond has seriously warped our understanding. 

Director Atul Sabharwal brings a tale set in 1993’s Delhi, that revolves around the specially abled Ashok Kumar (played by Ishwak Singh), who has been caught on the suspicion of being a spy for a foreign intelligence agency. The backdrop of it is the Russian President’s upcoming visit to India. His safety is compromised as someone wants to get their hands on plans about his movement. Pushkin Verma (played by Aparshakti Khurana) is brought in by intelligence official Jagdish Sondhi (played by Rahul Bose) to help in interrogating Ashok. All this quickly spirals out of control as things are not what they seem. The rest of it forms the plot.

What works

On the surface, things seem larger than life, spanning across countries. And that’s where Berlin scores. It’s revealed ultimately that the fight was never global – it was happening right at home, and merely orchestrated for reasons one doesn’t see coming. The attention to detail is immense. From the pin put inside a top secret file by Sondhi (so that anyone who tries to access it is pricked and it’s made clear that the information is compromised), to the banner which announces the Russian president’s visit right in the beginning as Pushkin is catching a bus – writer-director Atul Sabharwal has taken care of everything. The picturisation too is decidedly not full of popping colours – there’s a gradient texture to it that screams vintage.

What doesn't work

With half the job done to convince us of the setting, it was time to focus on getting the story right. And Atul has done an okay job of keeping the film from venturing into conventional territory. The story engages you, right until the climax which you don’t see coming. It’s a reminder of how life works – it’s not fair, but hang in there. The second half could have been made taut.

Performance report card

The cast of Berlin puts in everything to convince us. Ishwak Singh gets the body language of an aurally and verbally challenged guy absolutely right. We are told early in the film, that his football coach didn’t let him play because “voh baat nahi maanta tha, apni game khelta tha” (he didn't listen to anyone, played his own game) This is foreshadowing, because what follows is Ashok taking everyone for a ride, setting things in motion without uttering a single word. He controls the narrative, leading to a finale which leaves you stunned.

Aparshakti, who has shed all baggage of being the funny guy in previous films, gets a meaty role to dig his teeth into. And we can safely say that he manages to convince us as the morally upright, simple Pushkin, who is left broken at how the system works. Juniors here are mere pawns in the larger scheme of things.

Rahul Bose, an actor who always delivers, however just isn’t as... scary (?) as he is supposed to be. He emotes the cunning aspect to his character well, but it never manages to rise above that. The rest of the cast is okay.

Overall, Berlin deserves a watch for the atmospherics and conviction the maker and cast place in it. It's streaming on ZEE5.

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