Ulajh Movie Cast/ Actors: Janhvi Kapoor as Suhana Bhatia, Roshan Mathew as Sebin Joseph Kutty, Gulshan Devaiah as Nakul Bhatia, Adil Hussain as Vanraj Bhatia, Meiyang Chang as Jacob, Rajesh Tailang as Salim
Ulajh Movie Director: Sudhanshu Saria
Ulajh Movie Release Date: August 02, 2024
Ulajh Movie Available On: Theatrical Release and (likely to be released on Netflix OTT Platform)
Ulajh Movie Movie Released/ Available In Languages: Hindi
Ulajh Movie Runtime: 134 Minutes
Ulajh Movie Critic Review:
A Nepali leader has to fall in line with India because of embarrassing photographic evidence of his son’s involvement with shady folk.
A linguist at ease with several languages is identified as French-Canadian because of the way he pronounces ‘eclairs’.
Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer Suhana Bhatia (Jahnvi Kapoor, shown jogging with a troubled face every few sequences), has the sharp intelligence of a RAW agent, India’s safety is her priority, and patriotism runs in her blood. Picked to be the youngest Deputy High Commissioner to the UK, Suhana must impress Papa Bhatia (Adil Hussain), live up to the rajnaitik parivar’s impeccable credentials in the IFS and live down the charge that she got her appointment as a diplomatic dynast.
On the other side of the border, in an aman ki asha move, Shahzad Alam (Rushad Rana), the Prime Minister of Pakistan will visit India on our Independence Day. It’s driven home half-a-dozen times that he’s prioritising this over Pak’s own Independence Day which is a day earlier. India is honoured, truly, Junglee Pictures.
For the next hour or so, director Sudhanshu Saria introduces a dozen new faces in London, Rawalpindi, and Delhi. Including Suhana’s driver Saleem Sayeed (Rajesh Tailang) who straightaway seems more than just the man at the wheel and Jacob (Meiyan Chang) and Kutty (Roshan Matthews) who’ve been bypassed for the job that went to Ms Bhatia with the family connections.
There’s much back and forth that’s essentially about terrorist Yaseen Mirza (Himanshu Malik) who escaped from the custody of the Delhi Police and lives in Pakistan. Pak will send him back in a neighbourly gesture.
Written by Parveez Shaikh & Sudhanshu Saria with dialogues by Atika Chohan, there is so much confusion over what’s happening that by half-time, all that’s clear is that there is a connection between the Pak PM’s visit and the terrorist’s return. And somebody wants to disrupt the peace moves.
Considering her already fragile position in the High Commission and the attempts to prove she didn’t get there on merit alone, Sudhanshu Saria hastily gets Suhana into bed with someone called Chef Nakul (Gulshan Devaiah). A Nakul with no background, an uninvited gatecrasher who turns up at the High Commission’s social events. What’s it? Hormones prevailing over grey cells? There’s no build-up, no emotions, not even a pause to consider her sensitive posting before she’s caught in a reverse honey trap.
Along with the multi-lingual Nakul or whoever he is, the director and writers would like the audience to also turn linguists as the dialogues are a hybrid of Hindi, English, Japanese, French, and Malayalam too.
Elaborate scenes of Suhana compromising her position and Jacob turning up silently, don’t really pack an impact. After a few bodies are felled with Suhana triumphing in hand-to-hand combats with trained policemen and assassins, the bad Indians who wanted to hurt the good Pak PM stand exposed.
Apart from the unnecessarily convoluted storytelling, the main reason for a major disconnect is that Saria doesn’t get the viewer invested emotionally in Suhana or her troubles.
As pointed out many times in the film, however passionately patriotic an IFS officer may be, she is not trained in combat skills. But Suhana does it all, making her victory unconvincing.
Janhvi is a competent actress and she impresses most of the time but it gets tiring to keep seeing her big bewildered eyes and long, serious face. There’s also a sprinkling of the cinematic cliche, “I wanted to impress you, Papa, I wanted to make the family proud, Papa”.
An extra half-star is for the attempt at something different and for trying to give a woman diplomat her due.
Ulajh Movie – Watch Or Not?: Ideal as an OTT watch.
Ulajh Movie Review Score Rating: 2.5 out of 5 (i.e. 2.5/5)
Ulajh Movie Official Trailer:
Ulajh Official Trailer (Credits: Junglee Pictures)
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