Mission Extreme tried hard, but the convoluted story lets it down
For some viewers, Arifin Shuvoo’s natural charm as a handsome police officer and watching him take down terrorists might just be enough. However, a more suspenseful, coherent storyline could have made the film better.
'Mission Extreme' is a spiritual successor of the fan-favourite 'Dhaka Attack' (2017) - starring Taskeen Rahman, Fazlur Rahman Babu, Iresh Zaker, Shatabdi Wadud, Shahiduzzaman Selim, Manoj Pramanik and other talented actors.
Added with the charm of the most sensational actor of this time, Arifin Shuvoo, this movie sounds like a Christmas present, right? Unfortunately, it is not.
Whether it was the somewhat excessive use of drone shots of Dhaka city to make up for a predictable story, too small roles provided to too many prominent actors or too many storylines thrown in together that mess with the movie's pace, directors Sunny Sanwar and Faisal Ahmed seemed to try a bit too hard to reach the so-called international standards.
But when you get impactful movies like 'Dhaka Attack' from the same writers, such mistakes are bound to disappoint you.
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In this cop-action thriller, we see the reflections of popular Bollywood super-cop films like 'Singham' where the charm and brawn of the lead protagonist Nabid (played by Arifin Shuvoo) serve as a deus ex-machina.
It is also inspired by elements from the Amazon Prime web series 'The Family Man'.
The movie begins with a scene where the police are chasing a potential terrorist.
When everyone else fails to catch him, Nabid, a police officer who works at the Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) department, comes to the rescue.
Unfortunately, throughout the film, Nabid often gets things handed to him on a platter.
To make matters worse, within 10 to 15 minutes, you will get extremely confused with the plot, the cast and the uneven story transition.
It started with facts explaining the roots of terrorism and how young minds are brainwashed into it.
Being carefully constructed, the movie did not utter any religion's name, but it seemed biased towards a few groups of people.
Through the character Era (played by Sadia Nabila), the film attempted to illustrate the hardship of women working in the police force. However, it came out as overly dramatic.
The movie also boasts the beautiful Jannatul Ferdous Oishee who plays Sylvie, the female protagonist.
Sylvie works at a media house and following the typical trend of Bangladeshi films, 'Mission Extreme' did not provide much of a role to her either. Even the romantic relationship between her and Nabid felt awkward.
However, as it is her debut performance in a movie, she did well as a beginner.
In terms of the antagonists, 'Mission Extreme' wasted Khaled's (played by Taskeen Rahman) menacing presence by making him deliver some out-of-sync lines.
In terms of the story, the antagonists were portrayed to be comically villainous.
In this movie, every good actor is somehow a terrorist or given a small role.
We see Taskeen Rahman playing 'Khalid Bhai', one of the leaders of the terror squad that chants 'Free land for peace' often.
Iresh Zaker plays the role of 'Tarek bhai' - a local 'boro bhai' who recruits young adults to join their cause.
But their roles were reduced to some typical terrorist mumbo-jumbo while their motivations remained equally unclear.
They all are rooting for the Blue War's accomplishment, which is a big war against non-believers, but the story fails to hold the suspense or provide the background that might have made this transition believable.
The world does not operate in a black and white manner and it is never so easy to find out the culprits, but 'Mission Extreme' made it look too easy, that too without any proper explanation whatsoever.
The cinematography of 'Mission Extreme' by Sudipta Majumder was probably the best aspect of the movie and that says a lot.
A few action scenes do rescue a small part of this movie but it eventually becomes mediocre.
One of the annoying parts of the movie was the sponsored advertisements that drew comedy to the seriousness.
That being said, 'Mission Extreme', in essence, is an action-thriller and the directors did an okay job of creating the action scenes.
For some viewers, Arifin Shuvoo's natural charm as a handsome police officer and watching him take down terrorists might just be enough. However, a more suspenseful, coherent storyline could have made the film better.
