Naam Movie Review: Plot - Shekhar/Amar/Michael (Ajay Devgn) is a man who was shot multiple times for reasons unknown and left to die. A good doctor, Pooja (Bhumika Chawla), treats him well, only to realize he has lost all his memory. She gets married to him after he hugs her for the first time. Soon, they discover that Shekhar is actually an assassin whom the underworld wants dead, and he sets out on a journey to find himself and kill some more people—as if he hadn’t killed enough already. 

Naam Movie Review: Analysis

Every filmmaker who has worked in the industry for decades will, on average, have at least one movie that was made but never saw the light of day. Shoojit Sircar, who comes to us with I Want To Talk this week, worked on Shoe Bite with Amitabh Bachchan, but that film never got released. Anurag Kashyap’s Paanch suffering a tragic fate is also well-known. Now, add Anees Bazmee to this list with Naam, but the only difference is that his movie got the chance to see the big screen—and now it feels like we didn’t really need this to release after maybe a couple of decades. Weren’t we okay without this? Why would Bazmee do this to his own filmography?

The fact that we now discuss whether films have aged well or not is a pretty good conversation to have, as it allows cinema to grow and finally develop a better arc in comparison to what hasn’t aged well. Naam, starring Ajay Devgn and written/directed by Anees Bazmee, falls on the other side of the spectrum. It has everything that screams the movie has not aged well and highlights why some things happen for a solid reason—people shouldn’t go against karmic calling. If you’re in a hurry to say, “But this is a film that was written back in the day; watch it as a 90s actioner,” hear me out. Let’s not belittle the era by suggesting only mediocre movies were made during that time. We had Satya, Kaun, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, and many more well-written scripts.

So, when you tell me to watch this film with a 90s lens, I’d still find it supremely mediocre and mindless in parts for a movie that aspires to be a cut-throat thriller. Imagine: the first 4 minutes of the movie show a man running from people trying to kill him. They shoot him, and he falls into the sea. Four bullets in his shoulder and back, along with a minimal wound on his head, result in him losing his memory. He hugs his doctor and marries her the next second. A romantic song later, he owns a business that she has run for the last three years. That’s just the first 10 minutes. How does this man know what he’s good at? What is this “business,” and who helped him become so rich in three years? How can a woman love a stranger with no memory and marry him without knowing who he is or was? Why are we still watching this?

Naam is full of such things, with no logic and definitely zero magic—because how on earth can anyone justify this? There’s a reason why this movie didn’t see the light of day for so long, and it’s karmic. Perhaps the filmmakers should’ve left it in the past and let it remain an unfinished story. This is not the time to release a movie that now feels bizarre, as it’s a relic of a bygone era. It certainly isn’t a story that holds relevance, even in this age of re-releases and nostalgia.

Talking about the acting performances, Ajay Devgn seems to have been instructed to maintain a single expression throughout the movie—and he follows that memo to the letter (which is frustrating, considering he was actually a decent actor then). Bhumika Chawla as Pooja is essentially the grown woman whose parents never told her to stay away from strangers. Sameera Reddy exists to say, “Yeh main kahan phas gayi?” and dance to three Sunidhi Chauhan songs for her paycheck. Rahul Dev is actually the glamour quotient here, entering the movie with tattoos that look like they were drawn with bright, vibrant watercolors.

We won’t discuss the technicalities because whoever gave Ajay Devgn his porcupine hair and patchwork shirts should confess their crimes to God directly.

Naam Movie Review: Final Verdict

Naam doesn’t feel relevant or nostalgic enough to warrant a release decades after its production. The real question is why someone would still choose to release it.

Naam is set to release on the big screen on November 22, 2024. Stay tuned to Mobile Masala for more information on this and everything else from the world of streaming and films.

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