Genius movie review: After a while, the plot turns mind-numbing

Cast: Utkarsh Sharma, Ishitha Chauhan, Mithun Chakraborty, Ayesha Jhulka, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, K.K. Raina
Director: Anil Sharma

An orphan, whose parents get killed in communal riots, is raised by a brahmin who lives at an ashram in Mathura, cracks IIT with distinction, and therefore, is a brilliant mind, is offered a key job by the RAW, and seems to be the perfect young lad whom girls swoon over and guys admire. Although pretty young, he seems to be the sharpest at RAW, where as an ethical hacker, he has nearly all his seniors gaping wide-mouthed at his jaw-dropping capabilities.

Quite naturally, he wears loads of attitude on his sleeve, though he also has a heart of gold. Notwithstanding his aplomb and dare-me attitude, a young girl Nandini (Ishitha Chauhan) gets attracted to him in college, and swears undying love for him. In short, there is nothing that he doesn’t have, or cannot achieve!

With everything going perfect for him, there has to be something that awaits his nod, for him to get into trouble. You guessed it right: He has a greater mission at hand, and, as the RAW in-charge, leads a team.

Even as everything goes well, fate has other plans laid out for his future: He is burdened by the killing of his entire team while on an assignment. His world comes crashing down, and an inquiry ensues. But until he doesn’t avenge their death, he can’t live in peace with his love. So he hatches a genius plan.

In the midst of all the dramatic turn of events, we are also informed of his being a great desh bhakt. With almost every conceivable frill that would ensure a certain course of direction and an objective on the part of director Anil Sharma (whose earlier works include the jingoistic Gadar, Elaan-E-Jung) you almost second guess which way the film is headed.

IIT topper Vasudev Shastri (Utkarsh Sharma) whose entry into the engineering college is a breeze, rubs the second ranker, Nandini, the wrong way on the very first day of college. As they cross paths intermittently, Nandini finds him to be beneath her dignity, only to fall head over heels in love.

Later, as a team working on some of the most top-secret tasks with RAW, Vasu suffers a setback and becomes a victim of tinnitus after a physically challenging mission in Porbandar leaves him somewhat disabled. He has to endure a serious underlying medical condition due to damage to the inner ear that leads to high decibel levels of hearing. Doctors pronounce him getting close to becoming brain dead too. He survives multiple bullet wounds during a high-level mission as the head of a division of RAW named TOCSI. The agency’s primary aim is to track MRS (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a dreaded Islamist terrorist who works closely with the ISI. Together with Pakistan, MRS is determined to plant bombs in India, and make the lives of Indians miserable.

The aforementioned details of the plot may give you an idea of the film being very authentic and qualitatively superior. You may have seen juvenile plots converted into watchable fare on screen only for their great production values and believable acting skills of actors. Not in Genius. Here, you cannot ignore its gratuitous jingoistic flavour, shoddy CGI, poor production qualities and some jejune writing. Anil Sharma’s son Utkarsh in the lead will have to start from scratch to learn the basic in acting if he is serious about a career in films. His co-star Ishitha is even worse. For her, a crash course in acting will not even do the needful!