Commando is replete with action sans logic

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Action, in Indian cinema at least, is said to never work if there is no emotional base. However, the case can be quite opposite when one gets to watch action without logic—that too globally. And the new web series, Commando, inspired by the 3-film franchise of that name, falls into this category.

The film series featured the macho machine, Vidyut Jammwal, but over here, he is replaced by the virile Prem Parijaa as Virat, and for his associate, the garrulous Bhavna Reddy (Adah Sharma) is back after the second and third installments of the film. Unabashedly playing to the gallery, the series, which is of four episodes in Season 1, is about the length of a normal film, and deliberately goes illogical, simplistic and even ridiculous as it aims for the jugular—action, action and more action. Whether the sequences makes sense or not!

We are told that Pakistan houses an upbeat lab, where research is final on a deadly virus that can kill thousands in mere minutes. Col. Jaffer (Amit Sial), who is  livid about Pakistan being constantly defeated by India, has planned a massive attack on India with this, and when a first consignment is destroyed by Indian forces within Pakistan, he knows there is a traitor in their midst.

The traitor is Virat’s buddy, Kshitij (Vaibhav Tatwawadi), masquerading as one of the hands in the lab, and he is soon arrested and tortured, but not before he makes the lab temporarily inactive as he had hidden the vital pen-drive that is used to begin its operations (!).

It so happens that Virat and Kshitij are so close that they had a hand in each other’s life partners, and the married Kshitij is set to become a father. His wife Tina (Manini Chadha) thinks that her husband is enjoying himself on work at Geneva, which is strange as she knows that he is in the Army, for Kshitij has been undercover for a while! And now, it is Virat’s turn to extract him from a high-security prison and bring him back, even at the cost of postponing his own engagement to a colleague at RAW (Shreya Chaudhary).

In the process, he of course needs help from other Indians working covertly, or based in Pakistan, but his chief (Tigmanshu Dhulia), knowing that he is going alone from India, also deputes Bhavna Reddy to help him. The rest is like a comic book script, except that in such comics, the proceedings rarely go beyond logic!

Technically decent, the series is directed simplistically by Vipul Amrutlal Shah, who lets the stunt coordinators take centerstage. Vaibhav as Kshitij acts well, and so does Amit Sial despite his one-dimensional character, and Prem is decent as actor and scores in action (which is shown in the best ‘impossible’ fashion that has become globally trendy). A laughable factor is that we are informed that some of the other convicts in the jail include those who staged various blasts in India: How come they were arrested in Pakistan?

The series is made lively by the ever-animated Adah Sharma, reenacting the South Indian character she mastered in the film series that earned her Shah’s The Kerala Story. The sequence in which she turns the tables on the Pakistani jailor and batters him is one of the very few memorable ones in the film.

If you leave your brains in the next room and decide to just watch a harmless caper that is thankfully brief, Commando is for you.

Rating: **1/2

Disney+Hotstar presents Sunshine Pictures’ Commando  Created, produced & directed by: Vipul Amrutlal Shah  Written by: Vipul Amrutlal Shah, Sanjay Joshi, Krishnan Nallappa, Murali Nallappa & Avinash Singh Music: Vikram Montrose & Bishakhjyoti  Starring: Prem Praijaa, Adah Sharma, Vaibhav Tatwawadi, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Amit Sial, Shreya Chaudhary, Manini Chadha, Mukesh Chhabra, Jassi Kapoor, Ishtiyak Khan, Shaji Chaudhary, Abhimanyu Sarkar & others