Mission Istaanbul - Movie Review

Published: June 28, 2009

By JENNIFER HOPFINGER

Starring Zayed Khan, Vivek Oberoi, Shriya Saran, Nikitin Dheer, Shweta Bharadwaj, Sunil Shetty

After director Apoorva Lakhia’s 2007 hit Shootout at Lokhandwala, expectations were high for his subsequent project, Mission Istaanbul. But those hopes couldn’t have been more thoroughly dashed by this disaster of a film.

Vikas (played by Zayed Khan) is a risk-taking broadcast journalist who gets lured away from his popular Indian news channel by Owais Hussain (Sunil Shetty), a producer for a controversial news channel in Turkey that sounds very similar to Al Jazeera. It’s immediately apparent that the organization is a front for terrorists—apparent to everyone except Vikas, that is, who walks around in a fog trying to figure out the obvious. Maybe he’s so out to lunch because he’s heartsick over losing his wife, Anjali (Shriya Saran), who’s also a journalist. She divorces him because his work always comes first. But he isn’t lonely for long—he finds a new love interest, a mystery woman named Lisa (Shweta Bharadwaj), and she’s got trouble written all over her, which, of course, Vikas fails to notice.

Nor does it seem odd to him that his new boss at the Istanbul headquarters, Ghazni (Nikitin Dheer), looks like a meathead villain from a James Bond movie—hardly news executive material—and wears tuxedos that are too tight for his massive physique to the office. Ghazni warns Vikas never to go to the 13th floor of their office building, which would alert most curious reporters that they should do exactly that.

Thankfully for both Vikas and the audience, Turkish commando Rizwan Khan (Vivek Oberoi) shows up to tell him what’s going on—and gives the film its only redeemable moments. That Oberoi can convincingly deliver such bad lines is a testament to his talent. However, he’s not prominent enough in the film to save it.

There is little story here, but lots of chase and fight scenes. Attempts at comic relief fall flat—the only thing laughable is the blatant product placement.

Mission Istaanbul is rated Skip.

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