‘Rashtra Kavach OM’ review: Aditya Roy Kapur’s action fest is a misdirected missile

After John Abraham and Vidyut Jamwal, Aditya Roy Kapur is also trying to create a specific body of work, but action demands a persuasive script that punches its way into the audience’s imagination.  Malang gave some hope, however, luck doesn’t favour Aditya here as the story is as predictable as an alarm clock. The film’s screenplay is unnecessarily convoluted, and it only manages to test our patience.

Aditya plays commando Om who is sent on a mission to bring back an anti-nuclear missile shield that might have fallen into wrong hands. During the mission, Om gets shot, leading to partial memory loss which spurs the ungainly confusion in the story. The missile shield was developed by his father Dev (Jackie Shroff), who mysteriously goes missing. Om is nurtured back to health by his uncle Rathore (Ashutosh Rana), who had sacrificed his son Rishi to save Om. He reports to Murthy (Prakash Raj), who heads the mission, and is brought back to action by his colleague (Sanjana Sanghi).

Director Kapil Verma’s attempt to tell a story about patriotism, faith, and betrayal has lofty ideas from the word go. But the set design is tacky and the poor action choreography doesn’t do justice to Aditya’s new, ripped figure.

It not unusual for an antagonist and other supporting actors in an action film to be a bit melodramatic. However, in this film, these characters — played by professionals of high-calibre like Prakash Raj, Jackie Shroff, and Ashutosh Rana — lack a coherent character arc and motivation.

In his attempt to play this character who suffers with partial memory loss, Aditya seems to have forgotten the tropes to acting that he acquired over the last few years. There are apparent attempts from director Kapil to hide plot holes by letting the supporting actors indulge in explosive exchanges of dialogues. However, the gaps are too glaring to miss and the film ends up being an underwhelming experience. No shield can save this misdirected missile of a film.

Rashtra Kavach OM is currently running in theatres