Code Name Tiranga follows the story of a spy who is assigned the task of taking down the most dreaded terrorist while also trying to track a mole in her organization and saving the love of her life. The story is a pretty routine spy thriller which does rely a lot on the screenplay and performances. While the latter does deliver, it is the screenplay which is a little bland and has its fair share of issues. Standing at almost 138 minutes, the screenplay did seem like an amalgamation of 2-3 spy films put together, although to be fair it also did have certain moments to shine.

The drama opens with a supposed chance encounter leading to a newly blooming romance. Now sticking to this subplot, as the film progresses you get to know that this was half baked. A part of me then tried to imagine, what if this subplot was left out altogether on the edit table. And if the focus was on the covert operation? Would that have been a better approach? In the hindsight, but my answer was a resounding YES(remember how exciting Baby was?).

One of the core reasons why the drama did seem bland was that there wasn’t enough time invested(actually none at all), in the world building and character building. A good spy thriller does need these key ingredients. To give you a perspective, the main protagonist after an initial romantic subplot goes on a full gun throttle at a wedding. Now there is nothing wrong here and the drama is watchable but I as a viewer could never really connect with her because I wasn’t invested in her journey. It was a big assumption that she was the best in the business without actually showing me why!

Another instance was the introduction of the terrorist who was said to be dreaded. Again, why was he dreaded? What had he done previously? These questions needed to be established in the screenplay to evoke that sense of fear and thrill in the mind of the audience. This is the major flaw in the screenplay – the establishment of the world and the characters. So what then happens is that the writers are always playing catch up with the audience.

To be fair, the drama is not half as bad as some of the critics are making it out to be. It is extremely watchable and in certain parts engaging as well. But had they tried to make the drama a little more layered and tried adding a few more twists with the introduction of a few more characters then this film would have garnered a higher rating. The entire sequences regarding the revelation do fall slightly flat despite some shocking twists and turns is because you aren’t really invested in the drama. The final act too despite an outstanding action sequence felt almost like a video game. It was kind of underwhelming to say the least in a screenplay which was also a missed opportunity.