Neeraj Pandey’s The Freelancer is the latest addition to the many extraction thrillers already made. But it soars above many of them. Sure, it takes its own time to capture your undivided attention. However, you will soon get absorbed into the dreadful, dark and dastardly world created by Bhav Dhulia, who grabbed eyeballs for bringing alive the life and times of IPS officer Amit Lodha to life in Khakee: The Bihar Chapter. This time with The Freelancer, he translates pages from the book, A Ticket To Syria, for the screen. And he proves his mettle once again.
The Freelancer makes you uncomfortable right since its first sequence. We see a young Indian girl running barefoot through the narrow alleys of Turkey away from her captors. Just when she thinks she has finally escaped and left the big bad world of terrorism behind, a jeep hits her. We’re then transported to Tel Aviv where a mercenary named Avinash Kamat, who’s also an ex-cop from Mumbai, is paid a hefty sum of money to carry out a rendition in Afghanistan, which quickly establishes his bravado.
As for Aliya’s story… the young Indian girl, she meets Mohsin in Singapore and then marries him. Following the wedding, her in-laws trick her and take her to Istanbul and then Syria. Turns out, they were brainwashed by a distant relative named Farhat khala to denounce the worldly pleasures and ‘return to the right path of Islam’. In Syria, Mohsin’s family joins the ISIS. Avinash, who was friends and colleagues with Aliya’s father, Inayat Khan, decides to go to Syria and extract her from the grips of Islamic radicalisation.
The team of writers – Pandey, Ritesh Shah and Shirish Thorat ¬– deserves appreciation for a quick-paced and impactful screenplay. Once you get immersed into the world of The Freelancer, there’s no looking back. The writing is crisp, taut and gripping peppered with ample nail-biting and bone-chilling moments, which makes it a winning thriller. Editor Kathikuloth Praveen also deserve a mention here.
Yes, the screenplay tends to get predictable many a times, but kudos to Dhulia for keeping the viewers hooked to it through and through. The predictability also stems from the fact that an Indian-bred physically fit, stout and expressionless soldier can never fail in his mission, thanks to the many patriotic Hindi thrillers we’ve come across over the years.
The camps, dilapidated houses and local markets in Syria have been recreated in Morocco. Cinematographers Tojo Xavier, Arvind Singh and Sudhir Palsane have captured the grey and dim atmosphere of fear and chaos with aplomb that after a point may even make you feel stifled. The portions that particularly stand out are the ones with Aliya as she struggles to keep herself afloat in a place where death is just around the corner and hope is fast dwindling. When she sits in the washroom and secretly speaks to her mother with the fear of what if her husband hears her constantly looming, you find yourself clenching your teeth and gasping for breath. The Freelancer is disturbing and entertaining in equal measures.
On the other hand, Avinash’s backstory that led him to have a complicated relationship with his wife isn’t properly fleshed out. The makers barely touch upon it and that’s the reason why you don’t empathise with him for the most part. While Mohit Raina plays this part earnestly, he doesn’t really have an interesting arc to play around with. He’s brawny and well-built and can beat death in the eye but he doesn’t really hit the right notes in the emotional scenes. An actor of his calibre deserves a better etched out character to display his potential and versatility.
Anupam Kher plays Dr Khan, Avinash’s mentor. His character also suffers due to its undercooked treatment. By the end of it, you’ll be left wanting for more scenes and screen-time between him and Avinash. Sushant Singh, Ayesha Raza Mishra and the rest of the cast are good. Manjari Fadnnis and Sarah Jane Dias, however, leave you underwhelmed.
A revelation is Kashmira Pardeshi, who plays Aliya. She brilliantly slips under the skin of her character. The fear in her eyes is palpable and you want her to escape the clutches of death and destruction at any cost. Needless to say, she stands out from the rest and delivers an impressive and gritty performance. Balaji Gauri as Farhat khala and Navneet Malik as Mohsin are impressive too.
The Freelancer is unsettling and unpretentious. It’s definitely not clutter-breaking or off-the-wall. Instead, it clings to every rule in the book of thrillers. The way it’s treated, directed and executed isn’t avant garde either. Despite its shortcomings, The Freelancer deserves a watch for its spine-chilling, well-researched and gritty storytelling. Each episode ends on a cliff-hanger, which leaves you wanting for more, rendering it a very binge-worthy quality.
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