Naam Shabana

Taapsee Pannu carries this espionage thriller on her shoulders with commendable physicality and emotional restraint, but the film itself buckles under the weight of its own melodrama. Director Shivam Nair attempts to blend a revenge narrative with spy-craft procedurals, and while the action sequences have decent punch—particularly the hand-to-hand combat choreography—the screenplay doesn't know whether it wants to be a character study or a formulaic agent origin story. The tragic backstory feels shoehorned in, the motivation through Jai's death even more so, and by the time Shabana's inserted into the intelligence machinery, you're not entirely convinced this is a woman becoming an asset; it's a trauma victim being exploited. The film's central tension—personal vendetta versus institutional duty—gets muddled rather than explored.

What's frustrating is the wasted potential. A film about a woman with a violent past being weaponized by state machinery could be genuinely incisive, but instead we get conventional spy-fi beats wrapped in a layer of artificial gravitas. The supporting cast fades into the background, the plot mechanics feel predictable, and Shivam Nair's direction lacks the visual flair or narrative dexterity needed to elevate the material. The film makes money and audiences clearly connected with it, but from a filmmaking standpoint, it's serviceable at best—competently assembled but creatively hollow, relying heavily on Pannu's charm and the franchise appetite rat