Mrs. Undercover review: Radhika Apte’s spy comedy is a clueless, tonal misfire

Anushree Mehta’s Mrs. Undercover begins with a self-proclaimed woman-hater (Sumeet Vyas) who films a video of his Tinder date and then kills her, repeatedly running over her body with his car until he is sure. Then he proceeds to smoke a cigarette. It’s gruesome and chilling. Then in the next scene, we are introduced to Durga (Radhika Apte) as she takes down multiple goons who are following her at night, only to realize it’s a dream. Another of those James Bond dreams, asks her husband Deb (Saheb Chatterjee), harping on that she should have dreams about her family and her child for a change. This joke, if anything, lands miserably at the cost of progressive signaling, and goes on to introduce Mrs. Undercover as a film that doesn’t know which box to tick, so it ticks everything. (Also read: Jubilee review: Sidhant Gupta delivers star-making performance in Motwane’s sad, slow burn about movies)

The case doesn’t really rest here. Mrs. Undercover will then move on to tell how Durga, who is now a middle class housewife managing a chauvinist husband, his son, and his irritating parents under one roof in Kolkata, was once a spy agent. She has a gun hidden inside her jewelery box, but now she’s got no will or energy to return back to the game. Yet, the special forces team lead by the Chief (Rajesh Sharma) who is called- out of nowhere- Rangeela (cue to the ridiculous use of background music whenever he appears on screen), has enough time to stalk Durga, sometimes dressed as a pandit, or a fish-seller, a sweeper, and even a pimp, to get her to take on the case. Apparently she’s the only one equipped to handle the case, and get to the ‘common man’.

Of course, in all the cartoonish back and forth required to get Durga back to the case, our ‘common man’ is out there killing more women. Common sense seems to have left the entire frame of Mrs. Undercover, where every creative decision the screenplay takes on to press on its themes of empowerment turns into a tonal misfire. The loopholes in the screenplay become so visibly huge that one has already guessed the twist in the tale miles ago. Out of nowhere Durga enrols in a women empowerment program at a Kolkata college where our woman hater arrives as the main coordinator. Then Durga realizes her husband is a cheater. If this wasn’t enough, Mrs. Undercover then goes on to introduce the Chief Minister- wait for it- named Tanika Bhattacharjee! The purpose of her entry into the already overcooked screenplay can be left for another conversation no one wants to have.

Radhika Apte, who is always a compelling presence, is utterly wasted in a performance that is so riddled with its own tone-deaf characterization that one never fully takes her seriously. If you want your protagonist to practice shooting at a local fair with a gun aiming at water balloons, there’s no further point to be made. Sumeet Vyas, Rajesh Sharma, and Laboni Sarkar are all burdened with underwritten characters without any scope to shine. Mrs. Undercover hops on from one tone-deaf exposition to another, with tacky, neon-lit production design and hurried editing. The space and the overarching context of Mrs. Undercover, right down to its loud and wobbly denouement, neither has a personality nor curiosity. The disappointment writes itself over in capital letters. Worse of all, it name-drops places in Kolkata in infuriatingly callous ways.

Why was Sonagachi, Asia’s largest red light area, chosen out of all places to set the team up for the action? Did no one notice the mark on the common man’s arm? Even after the lens that can scan people and locate their identity that is used by Durga, how come there was no connecting evidence linking the common man’s location when he was standing right in front of her? The more questions you ask, all the worse Mrs. Undercover gets. Even a kid who has grown up watching C.I.D. will be able to trace our testosterone-charged, clueless serial killer faster than the entire police force combined in Mrs. Undercover.