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.

Naam Shabana is well intended but is unable to take flight due to poor writing.

Skip the film if you want to watch it for Neeraj Pandey’s previous filmography. Naam Shabana is nothing like his other films.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It’s all about girl power and that’s enough to make this a one-time watch.

Naam Shabana falls short of becoming a la Baby. A tepid script makes this film a strictly a average watch.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

‘Naam Shabana’ is not name worthy enough to match up to the potential of ‘Baby’. It has some brilliant fight scenes and good performance along with a lost opportunity.

Watch Naam Shabana purely for Taapsee Pannu’s fine performance and Akshay Kumar’s enjoyable cameo, and also if you loved Baby too much. Just don’t go into theatre expecting another quality stuff like Baby, even if the movie forces us to draw comparisons.

It barely works in this case largely due to the script, but in part because of Pannu’s deadpan expressions and in part because of director Nair overtelling it. Much more effort has gone into creating an authentic milieu than crafting an engaging character study in the foreground.

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 skyhigh against her.

…the pace of the film could have been forgiven. But, it is difficult to forgive no pounding hearts in a thriller. When the protagonist feels too safe, nothing can make you worry about her, can it?

Naam Shabana works because of some wonderful acting by Taapsee Pannu, Akshay Kumar and Anupam Kher, and some breathtaking aerial shots of Vienna, Kuala Lumpur and Mumbai. If you’re a fan of any of the leads, by all means head for the nearest cinema screening this one. And if you leave dejected by the entirety of it, well, you were warned.

If you are game to watch some good acting and realistic action sequences, then Naam Shabana should be on your list. But if you are in search of a watertight plot, then this movie has missed that mark.

Naam Shabana is a major letdown especially when you walk into the theatre halls carrying good ol’ Baby nostalgia and expecting a similar adrenaline rush. In a nutshell, we would prefer to settle for a rewatch of the 2015 espionage-thriller instead!

Tapsee Pannu gets a couple of emotional scenes right but her straight-suppress-my-feelings-face gets too monotonous. The film makes unnecessary judgments on civilians and their choices in order to glorify the defense. Err. Not cool! The film has a few beautiful shots of Mumbai, especially the ones shot in an Iranian café, but the overall plot, the execution, the slow pace and the lazy editing make it a rather dull watch.

‘Naam Shabana’ offers a fair treat in the form of the actors but somewhere fails to leave its mark like the sequel. The slow pace of the story-line and the dialogues can be blamed for this let down. Filled with action and only action, the film is highly recommended ONLY for all the ardent followers of Akshay Kumar and Taapsee Pannu as well. And of course for the vivid fans of the sequel ‘Baby.’