Berlin - The Deaf Mute Spy

Berlin

Hindi
Spy / Thriller

123 mins
Zee5

Berlin  is a spy drama,  written and directed by Atul Sabharwal. His previous works include the underrated Aurangzeb ( evil Rishi Kapoor and Prithviraj were outstanding!) and Class of '83 (Bobby Deol's best performance in his comeback innings, IMHO). He also wrote Prime Video's Jubilee (which i liked, but it was too much and too slow).  With this movie, he reaffirms his pedigree  and puts himself on my "look forward to"

Aparshakti Khurana (the younger of the two gifted Khurana siblings) is Pushkin Verma , a teacher in a deaf mute school. He is called in by a bunch of shifty babus led by Jagdish Sondhi (Rahul Bose) to interrogate a suspected terrorist Ashok ( Ishwak Singh), who is deaf mute. 

There is a Russian President visiting the in 7 days, a suspicion that Ashok knows something about this.  Another bunch of babus led by Deepak Qazir (nice to see after many years!) also take interest in these happenings and are pursuing Pushkin. What is "Berlin" ?, What is Ashok hiding ? Everything is not what it seems.

Ishwak singh, having previously played soft natured and good guy in Rocket Boys and Paatal Lok, is a volcano of expressions on the interrogation table. What an actor! The "sweet guy" touch is brilliant!. While I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the sign language, the conversations between Ashok and Pushkin are thrilling, you are only waiting for "the" questions to come! 

Aparshakti Khurana is very good too, oscillating from seemingly "i want to mind my own business" guy  to the "i want to get to the bottom of this" is a fantastic. I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but for me he is the Khurana sibling  with the  better acting range. 

The support cast , Rahul Bose as the growling Sodhi , Deepak Qazi as his nemesis and Kabir Bedi in a two scene cameo are all nice. I want to say something about Anupriya Goenka, but she literally gets 5 scenes and two dialogues!

Tight run time, well edited, Classy detailing and production design  (the cars, the clothing, but a little overboard with the coiffured styling 😀), Moody cinematography by Shree Namjoshi ( stunning work in Kota Factory ) and a very minimalistic score by K (Krishnakumar). 

In the times of the Big budget action/spy movies of the "YRF Spy universe" / James Bond / Mission impossible kind,  this is a throwback to old school Cold war / British Spy thrillers.  One that is definitely worth your time!