By: Aayan Mirza
Read the headline of this article once again. How would you evaluate it if you had to, this is how I would: Apparently, it looks smart, good enough to read, but there is something wrong with it – it is inconsistent within itself: What has the word ‘smart’ got to do with ‘mellow’, and how does ‘fast’ connect with ‘disconnected’. That is what’s wrong with the headline there, and that’s exactly what we evaluate of O21’s new trailer.
Now before we move ahead, watch this newly released trailer of O21 once again:
Without getting into any more philosophy, I would solely present here a simple comment on the trailer, an average O21 and Shaan Shahid’s die hard fan’s point of view, and as a huge follower of the spy-thriller genre in general.
I am a huge spy-thriller junkie, and the ones with fast paced action and express plots along with a true spy-thriller story have special place in my heart. From Brad Pitt’s Spy Game to Matt Damon and more recently Jeremy Renner’s Jason Bourne series, and from Angelina Jolie’s Salt to Danzel Washington and Ryan Ranold’s Safe House, I love them all.
And O21, thus, is the only film I truly care about for this Eid. I am extremely glad that Pakistan has finally come up with it’s own spy-thriller, and I am still, not an inch moved from my love for O21. While I believe, hope and have faith that O21 would live up to my personal expectations when it releases this Eid-ul-Azha, I would also say that this new trailer hasn’t fully lived up to my expectations.
At the point when it aptly manages to give O21 the aura of a film set in a global context, away from the day-to-day lives of a common man, it, at the same time, fails to make that context hit the audience right in their heart. Like a heartbeat, the trailer goes through a lot of spikes and drops, and doesn’t take the viewer with it.
It sets a good tone in the beginning, establishing the film’s global context, the Afghanistan shot, talks of trillion dollar resources, computers, phones, technology and the amazing Capitol Hill shot, they all help the trailer set the right ‘spy-thriller’ tone. But immediately after that, with the first shot of Summer Nicks, the trailer takes a dive down, starts feeling mellow, scattered and a bit forced. And God, what’s wrong with Wendy Haines’s voice, is she crying?
Anyway, the trailer takes another flight at, ‘Welcome to Afghanistan my friend’, but this flight unlike the first one is bit turbulent, touches its heights at ‘their are three kinds of friend….’, complemented greatly by the hand to hand combat shot, Shaan’s sniper shot, the sole Wendy Haines’s shot and the great Hameed Sheikh-putting-his-spectacles-on camera capture. After that, the scenes are mostly on their own, Gohar Rasheed and Shaan scene being the most interesting one among the last ones.
Another thing that kept bugging me throughout the trailer, and while watching the ones that came earlier, was the fact that at least and almost 80% of the scenes were in dark’, whether it was some sort of deliberated strategy or something else, it didn’t deliver the ‘I am a proper feature film, come watch me’ message. The darkness didn’t make the movie loud, which is understandable, but it made the movie look disconnected with the outer world.
Other than that, the positives of the trailer include, first of all, it’s cinematography, then it’s highly contemporary and researched action, and then it’s calculated dialogues, and no wannabe accents. One message, that this particular trailer successfully manages to deliver is, that ‘it has a lot to give to its audience other than just guns, choppers, extraordinary style, and more guns.’
Unlike it’s trailer, I hope the movie manages to meet our expectations and makes an identity of itself in Pakistani cinema.
