Naam Shabana
Movie Info
Synopsis
Naam Shabana is a movie that traces the genesis of Shabana and her journey of how she became a part of team BABY.Wikipedia
Starring Cast
Naam Shabana Reviews
3
The final nail is the incessant, annoying background music. It blares non-stop and makes this film even longer than it is.Naam Shabana leaves you with a niggling question: why create a heroine in the action hero mode, with both mind and heart, and then give her a big bro to ‘help’ her out? This results in second-guessing your biggest asset, wondering if she is a liability.
4
Naam Shabana is well intended but is unable to take flight due to poor writing.
3
Skip the film if you want to watch it for Neeraj Pandey’s previous filmography. Naam Shabana is nothing like his other films.
4
The film could have been better paced, all thanks to the under-cooked narrative. Naam Shabana is a throw away effort from director Shivam Nair and producer Neeraj Pandey, where the only saving grace is Taapsee’s act.
4
Naam Shabana is a sleek film, that unfolds at a wonderfully breakneck speed. It's crisp with no shoo-sha like my colleague Rajesh predicted.
4
Naam Shabana, for all its avowed aspirations, it rarely ventures beyond the trite and tested. Watch it only if standard-fare action dramas do not put you off.
6
Taapsee delivers some knockout punches and is sincere enough. Manoj is brilliant, though he has just dialogue-baazi and no action to support him. As for Akshay, he is happy to lend his superstar-presence and bask in the girl power. So go ahead and salute his spirit.
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The idea of a female spy who is out to kill evil men is not a bad one and almost unprecedented in Bollywood, and Pannu's one stand-out scene in 2015's "Baby" set her up nicely for the role. But on watching "Naam Shabana", you realise that not all stories need two hours of run time. Sometimes, a well-executed five-minute scene is more than enough.
4
It’s all about girl power and that’s enough to make this a one-time watch.
5
Naam Shabana falls short of becoming a la Baby. A tepid script makes this film a strictly a average watch.
5
While in Baby, the climax is almost nail-biting, Naam Shabana makes it all too easy to get rid of the bad guy. If you want to watch Naam Shabana, do; just make sure you don't go in with the expectation of watching a riveting action-thriller like Baby.
7
NAAM SHABANA may not have an innovative plot but it's a definite crowd pleaser. The makers have probably planned this probable money spinner banking on the popularity of their previous brilliant BABY and the movie doesn't disappoint in entertaining the action thriller hungry souls of Bollywood and also gives a soothing nostalgia to the diehard BABY enthusiast. NAAM SHABANA is a decent bahana (reason) for Bollywood makers to start thinking on the spin off genre and churn some more interesting twist.
4
Pandey has written this prequel, split into two totally separate films. And to be fair when the movie does cut to the chase eventually, to chase down the villain, some of the thrills do kick in. Sadly you've polished off your popcorn tub already, taking in the corniness until that point, while your head spins in circles in this pointless spin-off, listening to the zany 'Zubi zubi zubi' number from Mithun's 'Dance Dance' (1987), and so much else.
8
Naam Shabana is a film of rude awakening, reminding us how much maturity in vision treatment execution and the performances a film can achieve provided it stops looking for reasons to make audiences happy.Watching this film is a joy, although nothing really happy happens to Shabana. We are just happy that she can fight her own battles even when the odds are stacked skyhighagainst her.
3
Naam Shabana is a better film than Baby. It has a more polished appearance, and the idiotic bad guy here is at least less idiotic than the amateurs in the earlier film.
5
Naam Shabana is a spinoff backstory of one of the characters from the successful film 'Baby,' the story is a tad too obvious, but the action sequences redeem the film.
Audience Reviews for Naam Shabana
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Average
best : Acting
worst : screenplay2May 17, 17 -
Whenever we talk about Hindi espionage movies, one of the first few films that comes to my mind is Neeraj Pandey's "Baby". So when it was announced that Neeraj Pandey is planning a spin off prequel titled "Naam Shabana", I was pretty excited. The trailer further heightened the expectations as it showed Prithvi as the antagonist & Akki in a cameo, not to forget about Taapsee who kicked some serious ass. So it now remains to be seen whether it was able to live upto expectations & deliver what it promised???
For those who have seen "Baby", it's unlikely that you would have forgotten special agent Shabana Khan (Taapsee Pannu) who rocked the screen in a brief role. In "Naam Shabana", it shows as to how she was recruited into the intelligence agency. Shabana was a martial arts student who had a dark past due to which she used to confide only in her mother. When her friend, Jay (Taher Shabbir) expresses his love for her; things started to brighten up in her life until Jay meets with his death in an eve-teasing incident. At this juncture, she gets an offer from the agency that they would help her avenge Jay's death if she agrees to join them. Shabana accepts their offer but was she really upto the challenge???
Shivam Nair has called the shots & since I havent seen any of his previous movies, I dont have any reference as to how good he is as a story teller. However, since it is Neeraj Pandey's production I had huge expectations especially since he was handling the script & screenplay. Without mincing words, I would have to admit that it was nowhere in the league of "A Wednesday", "Special 26" or "Baby". The film invests an enormous amount of time on the backstory which was far from engaging & if one expects that things will get better when the mission starts, then they are grossly mistaken. The plot is wafer thin & apart from a couple of sequences, it lacks logic and finesse with the hasty predictable climax being the prime example for it.
One of the highlights of the movie are the action sequences which were choreographed by noted French stuntman Cyril Raffaeli. Even Sudheer Palsane deserves praise for the long shot visuals while the music was pretty mediocre. Taapsee has performed admirably as the protagonist in the action sequences though in the other segments, she comes across as rather bland. Even though Prithvi is the villain, it was more like a cameo & he gets wasted in a role which lacked substance. Akshay rocks in his brief role (included keeping the box office in mind) while Manoj Bajpayee is barely allowed to do anything significant apart from talk on the phone & keep looking on the screen.
Verdict: Since female centric action movies are quite rare in our country, it is unique in that sense. But however on saying that, more often than not Akshay's character seemed to take centre stage as the protector, rather the backup that he is projected to be. It should be able to collect a reasonable initial but once that is over, it will struggle to remain relevant. In short, keep yourself occupied watching the finals between Federer-Nadal at the Miami Masters & Sindhu-Marin at the India Open, rather than investing time for this!!!
Rating: 2.25/5
Regards...Ben
0April 01, 17 -
The fact that Amitabh Bachanesque male prowess is STILL exhibited in our movies (male lead single handedly decimating 8 armed to the teeth purportedly elite guards) is a serious lament of our times. The plot is loose, unrealistic and elaborately unreal in it's connect.
Perhaps we should get a standard advisory with every movie.....those with a thinking head, go have a beer instead. OR fantasy world ahead....shoot some dope to appreciate.
The entire cast goes around with dour & serious expressions through the movie, THAT is supposed to give it a "serious tone" and magically everything on screen is supposed to make sense and seem plausible as a plot coz' after all it's about national security so the director woudnt kid around right. God help us.
This is not unlike asking a 5 year old to evolve a thermo-nuclear calculation, that is about how asinine this script is. On the acting, Tapsi Pannu does a pretty decent job but I'm sure even she realizes this far from the debut she could have wished for herself. Apart from Manoj Bajpayee, everyone else should definitely go in for a sabbatical before returning to film again.
What a sorry waste of time and an utter & blatant abuse of sensibilities.
0April 16, 17
