IB71 Review - An IB Thriller Without Intelligence & Brain

IB71 marks Sankalp Reddy's return to Hindi cinema as well as Vidyut Jammwal's debut as a producer. Sankalp Reddy started his career on a promising note with The Ghazi Attack (nothing great though, but a good one), followed by a couple of mediocrities (including a short one), and then he decided to take on a challenging and difficult subject like IB71. The attempt is neither effective nor promising. It's hard to believe that a bunch of screenwriters sat together to explore a true event and failed to build a decent story, forget good. IB71 was a potential classic, but all it makes out on the big screen is a big, boring thriller and an uninteresting drama. Let's just thank God that it wasn't jingoistic since the 2023 audience is far superior in terms of choosing updated projects.IB71 is based on the true story of India's mission to hijack a plane flying to Pakistan. Dev (Vidyut Jammwal) is an IB agent who enters the Pakistan Army's ghetto and comes with important secrets about Pakistan attempting a brutal attack on India, who are unaware of it. To make it happen, Pakistani planes have to travel to East Pakistan (today's Bangladesh), and the only bypass for them is Indian airspace. Dev discusses a plan with IB Chief N.S. Awasthi (Anupam Kher) and gets on his toes to plan everything according to his secret mission. The secret mission is not so secret here, though. Dev and his agents fly together, but their plane is hijacked by Kashmiri militant Qasim Qureshi (Vishal Jethwa) and his aide. All 30 Indians land in Pakistan, and then the Pakistan Army takes them into formal custody until further discussion. Will Dev and other Indians be able to get back to India safely? Will his mission be successful? Find answers in IB71.Written by Aditya Shastri, IB71 could've been a realistic thriller—if wanted. Sankalp Reddy, Arjun Varma, E. Vasudeva Reddy, Arun Bhimavarapu, Gargee Singh, and Abhimanyu Srivastava's screenplay is a big letdown. What is a thriller without a good screenplay? Nothing. IB71 goes through multiple layers that don't fit in a basket. Neeraj Pandey's Baby (inspired by the Oscar-winning Argo) has set a landmark for such thrillers that is hard to match. Akshay's own Airlift couldn't make much out of it the way Malayalam flick Take Off (2017) did. Frankly, anything after Argo (a next generation successor to Carol Reed's 1940 thriller, Night Train to Munich) looks so mediocre. IB71 is way behind all these films, as the story lacks thrills, the screenplay lacks twists, and the drama lacks engaging elements. The structure of the narrative is too dull to hold your breath. The first half ends on a tepid note, leaving you with no interest in the second half as you already know the results.What kind of thriller reveals the results before taking off? If you know the outcome already, what thrills can you feel while watching the film? IB71 simply misses the basic concepts of a thriller. They just had to make the Pak army and officers look dumb so that the audience would enjoy it, but seriously, it's just too mainstream and predictable. A Pakistani officer was intelligent enough to understand the weather over the telephone voice, but IB officers didn't pay attention to this loophole. The same officer would travel in a Jeep to catch the Indians, while the easiest way to stop them was to make a telephone call to the Ganda border. The protagonist will still remain calm and full of attitude even at gunpoint after a hijacking, and he will even give tips to a hijacker. The film is hurt by such silly screenwriting that looks too dated and blurry for 2023.Vidyut Jammwal hardly has anything to offer as an actor or as an action star. Other times, you would enjoy his action and forget about his performance, but here you neither get any of them. Anupam Kher's role is so simple and easygoing that it doesn't look like the actor is even trying to make it look like acting. It's effortless, but nothing great. Vishal Jethwa speaks in a vernacular accent, but that's mandatory; as the character of a Kashmiri frontier, he had to look offensive and a little brainless, as the character demanded. His accent, too, sounds bad, but that's how "they" sound, right? Dalip Tahil is wasted with an unnoticeable role, Faizan Khan and Mir Sarwar are okay, and Hobby Dhaliwal and Suvrat Joshi carry on with their personas. The supporting cast, which consists of Niharica Raizada, Ashwath Bhatt, Danny Sura, Sahidur Rahaman, Pyarali Nayani, Rajat Roy, and Amit Anand Raut, has done a decent job.IB71 has a theme song called Vijayi Bhav that suits the momentum, but it is somewhat jingoistic. The cinematography isn't anything to look out for, and the sound design is partially okay. What's more disappointing is the background score, which is neither well scored nor well used. It just plays whenever the director wants it, when it should have been whenever the situation wanted it. Thankfully, the production value is not cringeworthy. IB71 is mounted on a good scale, and the frames are far from what you would call a B-grade presentation. Sankalp Reddy had gold in his hand, but he was unaware of it and was dreaming of copper. He could have been a goldsmith, but he decided to become a blacksmith. All he could see was iron and metal, not gold or diamonds, while digging into the history of the 1971 war. His intelligence and brain couldn't realise what IB71 needed. As a whole, it's a thriller without thrills and a drama without a soul. I wish somebody else (someone like Neeraj Pandey or Meghna Gulzar) would have handled this subject, and we might have gotten a better picture to celebrate the unknown heroes and victory of the Indian defence system.