Squad Is So Awful It Hurts

Squad(Zee 5)

Rating: *

Squad(Zee 5): It hurts . It really  hurts to see young Rinzing Denzongpa’s career being crushed  under the  undiscriminating wheels of  such  amateurishness.

  This is an unpardonably bad  film. Those  behind the making of Squad  should be put  in front of  a firing squad.  Those in  front of   the camera deserve our heartfelt sympathy.  No actor, no matter how incompetent, deserves to be  so brutally compromised. No  film in recent memory has  made such woefully inadequate use  of a cast in desperate  pursuit of some  moments, some  hope in the midst of the despair  that  shrouds this cadaverous  compendium of the cretinous and the cacophonous.

The  humourless action film about RAW-like agents rescuing a little girl from Georgia is  shot with all  the seriousness of a drunken  monk  trying to trapeze across a tumultuous river.  There is no interest in seeing the proceedings plumb new  depths  every  moment. It is  like   watching a car crash  into  a wall.

Debutants  Rinzing Denzongpa and  Malvika Raaj  playing squad members have  no  opportunity to  prove anything except that they are in the wrong fun. Seniors Mohan Kapoor and  Pooja Batra try to have  some fun with their  roles as  a couple of squabbling squad commanders with a  chip on their  shoulders. While Ms Batra takes her  role seriously(the spectacles  don’t really help) Kapoor tears into his part  with wolfish delight. He is  the only one who knows what he has  gotten himself into.

Debutant  Rinzing Denzongpa’s character  Bhim  suffers  from a serious  deprivation of  motivation. He is  on a mission to rescue a  little girl. But he is afraid of children, he says. Why? Because  he saw one  die during a terror flush-out operation. The  relationship that  grows, or is meant to grow, between  the  hero and his  vulnerable visitant  remains a flickering  possibility in this laughably  loutish  film .

The  potentially  interesting outdoor locations are  squandered away  with most of the heated  discussion happening indoors.

Producer-writer-director  Nilesh Sahay owes  everyone an explanation on what exactly the purpose  of  Squad is supposed to be. Is  it meant to be a  joke? Or  perhaps to show future generations how actions films are  NOT  supposed to be directed?