India’s Most Wanted is a tragic waste of its source material. A real-life chase demanded the bare-knuckled Paul Greengrass, Kathryn Bigelow or Delhi Crime treatment. The feasibility of the story itself is the film. But the language it uses – that of Kabir Khan and Neeraj Pandey spy/action dramas – is more suited to the fetishization of a make-believe genre. Almost as if the director doesn’t trust us to understand that capturing terrorists is not a mundane 9-to-5 job. This, however, does sort of explain the coming-of-age soundtrack. Forget finding the bad guys; I hope they found themselves.

Gupta throws in real-life shots of bomb blasts in India to emphasise the importance of the mission, but they can’t match the story’s sluggish pace. A deadpan Kapoor is ineffective as a master spy on a mission of a lifetime, putting in an one-tone, monotonous performance as Prabhat that weighs down an already sagging film.

If you’re in the mood for a documentary-styled ‘real’ film, you may find something to take back from here. Having said that, in this case, the intention can be lauded, but definitely not the execution.

…is a very badly scripted and poorly made film with weak performances. It will face complete rejection at the box-office – and deservedly so.

This terrorist manhunt is overheated and undercooked…