Chasing Spooks:
A financial defaulter living the high life in Dominica dismisses a pretty young intelligence agent. “This honeypot trick is old now,” he sneers. Thankfully, also out of the picture are the overused jihadis, suicide bombers and drug dealers. Special Ops 2 has upped the ante—today wars are fought in cyberspace, and China is the enemy that is planning an attack on India’s economy by hacking the financial networks.
In the web series directed by Neeraj Pandey and Shivam Nair, Himmat Singh (Kay Kay Menon) is back in position with RAW, where he reluctantly reports to the Defence Minister (Harish Khatri) and the glum, suited bureaucrats, but runs his operations his way. This time, the thriller spreads its tentacles through several countries—Hungary, Georgia, Bulgaria (East Europe laying out the red carpet for Indian shoots), Dominica, Greece, and more; after some time the mind starts boggling at the places Himmat Singh’s team operates, seemingly teleporting from one country to another, armed and dangerous. At one point the screen reads “Meanwhile in another time zone…” Needless to say nobody sleeps, eats, or gets jet lagged while the insanely dangerous missions are carried out all over the globe.
This time, Himmat Singh stays off the field, as his multiple phones keep track of his agents, who get terse orders about where to go and whom to target, which they do like cheerful schoolkids on a picnic. In his office, with robotic minions at computer terminals, he barks impossible deadlines at his wide-eyed assistant Sahil (Ashutosh Shukla), who probably never goes home, still his white shirts remain uncreased.
Two main plot lines involve the kidnapping of an Indian scientist and AI expert, Dr Bhargav (Arif Zakaria), and Himmat’s personal mission on behalf of his mentor, Subramaniam (Prakash Raj), to bring back multi-crore bank loan defaulter Jignesh Dholakia (Hitesh Dave) to India. Subramaniam comes out of Neeraj Pandey’s own A Wednesday (2008) in which a common citizen, fed-up with the apathy of the system, decides to go rogue.
Himmat Singh, moves through the corridors of power with a swift pace, only taking time for quick phone conversations with his wife (Gautami Kapoor), dealing with the tantrums of his adopted daughter (Revathi Pillai), before heading out again to save the country. A man like this needs a worthy nemesis, and that is the chameleonic Sudheer (Tahir Raj Bhasin), the evil mastermind behind the abduction of Bhargav and the plot to destabilise India on behalf of whichever power –East or West– pays him more.
Like Himmat’s byzantine schemes to deal with every crisis, Sudheer plans the kidnapping in Hungary, while having a hit carried out on an intelligence agent (Tota Roy Choudhury), who killed one of his Chinese cohorts. Himmat’s globe-trotting army includes Farooq (Karan Tacker), Avinash (Muzzamil Ibrahim), Juhi (Saiyami Kher), Abhay (Vikkas Manaktaia), and Ruhani (Shikha Talsania)—the last brings much-needed humour to the show with her cover as a Hyderabadi housewife, whose husband is baffled by her strange and sudden comings and goings. Dr Harminder Gill (Kamakshi Bhatt) brings the smarts as Bhargav’s second in command, who is fond of partying. Vinay Pathak returns as harried Delhi cop Abbas with Parmeet Sethi and Kali Prasad Mukherjee as Himmat’s disgruntled colleagues.
Special Ops 2, is dizzyingly fast, and it zooms from one mission impossible to the next. Himmat just has to say climb that hill, jump that cliff, neutralize a small army in two minutes, assassinate a gangster behind a fortress, and it is done without a glitch. And real-life snippets like cyber attacks, the spy malware Megasus (Pegasus), the loan default scandal are peppered into the narrative (Pandey has co written with Deepak Kingrani and Benazir Ali Fida) to give it topicality.
The DOPs (Arvind Singh, Dimo Popov) and editor Pravin Kathikuloth), action directors (Abbas Ali Moghul, Laszlo Kosa, Irakli Sabanadze) must have had their work cut out for them. The background music by Advait Nemlekar, is thankfully, not loud and obtrusive.
Kay Kay Menon conveys a range of emotions, even though his default look is stoic. If there were to be in Indian Gabriel Allon (Daniel Silva’s Israeli master spy), Himmat Singh would take the honours. The showy world of a tuxedoed, Aston Martin driving James Bond is almost over. Himmat wears shirts in dull colours with the sleeves rolled up, drives an ordinary car and never demands a martini shaken or stirred. Both the good side and the bad have to be tech savvy as well as gun ready. Despite its bouts of implausibility, Special Ops 2 captures the spirit of the modern-day spy thriller and runs with it.
(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)