A bank cashier is recruited to spy for India, with several reasons to double cross. What could have been an action packed drama seems to be caught in a quagmire of stereotypes and predictability. It is so slow it fails to hold your attention despite a good premise.

John Abraham-Mouni Roy’s espionage drama keeps it real and engaging…

Some of the sequences are unexpectedly heartwarming. But I wish the film could have avoided the cliched depiction of Pakistan with paper green flags strung on threads across streets. Pakistan, as we all know, is a state of mind created to infuse an unreal level of patriotism in Indians. Given that volatile situation, ‘RAW’ reveals a remarkable restrain.

This film has   the most understated performance by John Abraham in recent times. He oozes sincerity in every frame, and tries gamely not to break character and go all berserker-like against the baddies, breaking their necks with bare hands. We wait for that to happen but for once his character uses brains rather than brawns to defeat his enemies…

John Abraham is sincere but is handicapped by his poorly-etched character. Mouni Roy and Alka Amin, as his girlfriend and mother, respectively, have nothing to do. Yadav is alright, and so is Anil George as Afridi. Two actors who act competently but are wasted after a long gap are Suchitra Krishnamoorthy as Rehana Kazmi, an Indian journalist, and Shaadab Amjad Khan as Afridi’s son. Sikandar Kher is just okay, his performance clichéd and on the borderline of hamming. The others just fit the bill.

The film, sadly, does not.

RAW could have had an interesting story line but Robbie Grewal’s overambitious route leads to the downfall of RAW. Patriotism is overused to compensate for what we will call bland storytelling.

Romeo Akbar Walter is a contrived espionage drama. At one stage, the film appears to be a documentary telling us about the birth of Bangladesh

This entire final episode is as bizarre and as difficult to digest as the weird name he adopts. The final throw of the dice gives India an edge in the war in the fictional account that the film conjures up, but it does little to rescue Romeo Akbar Walter from its dispiriting somnolence.

These stories deserve the spotlight more than ever before, given the tinderbox India is sitting on currently after the Pulwama attack. But RAW chooses to tell the other, more populist side of the story. Though that is completely the makers’ choice, one wishes they would have not given up on nuance while translating the popular sentiment into a half-baked spy thriller.

Given the twists and turns, John Abraham starrer Romeo Akbar Walter comes across as a convoluted and tedious mess

Romeo Akbar Walter, starring John Abraham and Mouni Roy, fails to deliver. Instead, Robbie Grewal’s directorial debut looks like a paler cousin of Meghna Gulzar’s Raazi.

The movie appears ‘raw’ at many instances and one only wishes that it was cooked better.

Robbie tries hard to make RAW like Raazi, but doesn’t quite get it.

Trying to find too much logic here is totally futile. Fashioned along the lines of the childish, old-fashioned B-grade Bollywood-Hollywood thrillers, RAW is all about the hidden transmitters and surveillance rooms and gratuitous third degree torture in ISI detention centres, laughable polygraph tests and sundry similar procedurals and investigations.

While the story does lack an intellectual plot to make this intriguing enough, John Abraham carries the film on his shoulders.

The John Abraham starrer suffers from its length, and the pall of dullness that hangs over the proceedings. A spy needs to be a patriot. That’s why he does what he does, knowing that he is ‘deniable’.

John Abraham stars in a dumb movie about intelligence…A stiff John Abraham threatens to blend into the traditionally wood-panelled walls

RAW never really examines its main character’s obvious identity crisis and his conflict of faith – partly due to the actor’s limited abilities, but mostly due to the mood of our times

The silver lining is that with a relatively more serious No Fathers in Kashmir as the only other release in theatres combined with the mood of the nation veering towards the patriotic, RAW, despite its flaws, could well have a smooth run.

…fails to impress as it suffers from a flawed script as well as a weak and lengthy execution. At the box office, it will have an uphill task to register impressive numbers.

All said and done, Romeo Akbar Walter could have been a lot better than what it is now. The paper-thin plot, pretending to be a lot intelligent than what it is backed by a very lousy narration. Don’t fall for the patriotic trap!

Toss a coin; do you want new Ra(w) or not-so-new Ra(azi!)

RAW has its moments but is rough around the edges. The climax is audacious and you need to suspend your disbelief, if you plan to watch it.