Parmanu
Synopsis:
John Abraham is sweating profusely inside a blindingly hot underground bunker in Pokhran while staring nervously at a computer screen that looks like it was programmed in nineteen-ninety-five. Stuff happens. Pokhran-Two happens. Okay wait let me back up a second because Parmanu isn’t your average run-of-the-mill Bollywood movie where people randomly break out into synchronized dance routines in the Swiss Alps, even though honestly that would’ve been hilarious here. Let’s talk about the setup first because it’s actually based on real-history events about India’s secret nuclear bomb test trials. John plays Ashwat Raina, an honest bureaucrat who previously totally messed up a similar secret mission back in ninety-eight because of bad intelligence and got thrown under the bus by his slimy superior Sharma played by Aditya Hitkari. Look, Ashwat is just sitting at home now doing some boring desk job while his wife and kids quietly judge him for ruining his career, but then Boman Irani walks in as the Prime Minister’s principal secretary Himanshu Shukla and gives Ashwat a second chance to redeem himself and lead a brand-new top-secret mission to build and detonate the bombs before American spy satellites catch them.
And then boom, we are thrown into a massive casting montage where Ashwat has to recruit a crack team of specialists because that is literally mandatory for every single espionage thriller in Bollywood history. He gets an engineer, a software nerd, a military guy, and basically all these archetypal side characters who don’t really get much personality besides doing their specific jobs really well. They all head out to the desolate desert of Pokhran disguised as scientists and military personnel, and I need to pause right here to fixate on this one specific extra in the background of the army camp who is wearing the most hideous neon green windbreaker that completely clashes with the dull yellow sand and I stared at that ugly jacket for a solid three minutes wondering why wardrobe approved it. Anyway, they start digging shafts, hauling massive crates of uranium, and setting up complex wires while CIA spies led by this menacing American guy named Henderson start sniffing around the area trying to ruin everything. And then right in the middle of all this rising tension about whether they’re gonna get caught by satellite imagery, the movie completely grinds to a halt to shove in this super random romantic flashback song of John and his wife holding hands on a rainy street that literally nobody asked for and completely ruins the pacing.
The interval point hits right when the team realizes the Americans have updated their satellite orbit schedules and they literally only have a tiny window of a few hours to transport the nuclear devices to the shafts and wire them up without getting spotted from space. And then the second half turns into this insanely stressful cat-and-mouse game where the team has to constantly pack up and hide their equipment every single time a spy drone or a local politician gets too close for comfort. Ashwat has to make these brutal split-second decisions while dealing with massive pressure from the government back in Delhi who are getting cold feet because international sanctions could wreck the country’s economy. And then out of nowhere, betrayal strikes because one of their own team members turns out to be a double agent leaking their exact coordinates to the CIA, leading to a frantic shootout and car chase across the rocky desert terrain that feels super gritty and grounded compared to the physics-defying action usually found in modern Hindi movies.
Ashwat gets cornered by enemy agents, he gets beaten up pretty badly, his secret phone gets smashed, and everything looks completely hopeless for a minute there. But he manages to outsmart the double agent using a clever trick with some decoy equipment and rushes back to the underground command center just as the countdown clock is reaching its final terrifying digits. Diana Penty shows up as Captain Ambalika, kicking major butt and helping secure the perimeter against local interference, and honestly, she totally steals the show during these chaotic final acts. They hit the manual trigger button because the automated systems fail at the absolute worst possible second, and the bunker violently shakes as massive seismic shockwaves ripple through the desert. The test is a massive, roaring success, India has officially joined the nuclear club, and the government officials who doubted Ashwat are suddenly smiling and praising his genius.
Ashwat walks out of the dusty bunker, adjusts his glasses, stares out into the blazing hot sun with a massive wave of relief washing over his tired face, and he finally gets into a jeep to drive away back to his family as the screen cuts to black.
John Abraham squints against the desert sun with an intensity that suggests he is personally offended by the grains of sand, which is honestly the right energy to bring to a dramatization of India's 1998 Pokhran nuclear tests. Director Abhishek Sharma has an uphill climb here because everyone in the audience already knows the ending, as India successfully detonated five devices and the world found out via a brisk evening news bulletin. You cannot rely on plot suspense when the Wikipedia page has been public for two decades. The screenplay by Saiwyn Quadras tries to manufacture nail-biting tension by inventing shadowy American satellite operators who spend their workdays staring at computer screens with extreme disapproval. These CIA agents look like they were cast out of a local theater troupe in suburban New Jersey. They stalk around dimly lit control rooms barking about sovereignty and sanctions while the Indian scientists calmly drink tea in the dusty heat.
The film moves with a strange lurching rhythm during the first hour as it sets up disgraced bureaucrat Ashwat Raina, who is forced out of the government after an earlier botched test. Abraham plays Raina with all the emotional flexibility of a concrete pillar. It works better than you might expect. He is not trying to give a masterclass in subtlety. Instead, he just stares intently at whiteboards and barks orders at junior analysts. Diana Penty shows up as an intelligence officer whose primary function is to look sharp in trousers and explain the spycraft to the audience. She has a scene where she dodges surveillance in a crowded marketplace that feels lifted directly from a mediocre Bourne rip-off. Boman Irani plays the prime minister's principal secretary with his usual theatrical flair, chewing scenery with obvious relish while sporting a mustache that deserves its own billing in the credits. There is a recurring background extra in the PMO scenes who keeps shuffling papers out of order, and once you notice him, you cannot look at Boman Irani's speeches without watching that poor clerk scramble to catch up.
Hindi movies love a good patriotic swelling background score, and Parmanu leans on Sachin-Jigar’s music cues until the brass section cries for mercy. Every time a character looks pensively at a map of Rajasthan, the horns kick in with the subtlety of a falling safe. The cinematography by Zarwan Patel opts for an aggressive, sun-bleached yellow grade that makes every exterior shot look like it was dipped in turmeric. Sometimes the camera lingers on a close-up of a digital countdown clock for three beats too long. It is a small thing that bugs you after the fourth or fifth time. The editing gets genuinely choppy whenever the narrative cuts between the bureaucrats in Delhi and the scientists in the desert. You lose track of who is holding the detonator codes and who is just standing around looking anxious in a jeep.
What keeps the whole enterprise afloat is its bizarre structural commitment to bureaucracy as an action genre. Most modern Bollywood action thrillers rely on slow-motion punches and gravity-defying motorcycle stunts to keep the blood pumping. Parmanu replaces fistfights with paperwork. The heroes have to smuggle nuclear cores across state lines using ordinary Maruti vans while avoiding local checkpoints through sheer administrative cunning. It is strangely compelling to watch people worry about vehicle maintenance and diplomatic pouches instead of firing submachine guns. It reminds you of how Ben Affleck handled the tension in Argo, minus the Hollywood polish and the wigs. The film treats the logistical nightmare of hiding heavy machinery from American spy satellites with a straight-faced earnestness that borders on the absurd. You start rooting for them simply because they managed to pack all those crates without getting pulled over by a traffic cop.
When the third act finally reaches the test site, the tone shifts from a low-rent spy caper into something resembling a science fair documentary crossed with a patriotic rally. The scientists argue about cables and radiation shielding while the clock ticks down. It lacks the quiet, devastating precision of Christopher Nolan's recent work on a similar historical subject, but it has a scrappy, hardworking charm that prevents it from feeling entirely cynical. The VFX used for the underground shockwaves look like they were rendered on a slightly outdated home computer, yet there is an honest sweat to the production that shines through the digital smoke. When the final blast goes off and the characters high-five in a dusty bunker, you feel the relief of people who just want to go home and sleep for a week. That feeling stays with you longer than the political posturing or the cardboard-cutout villains.