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Cathedral: Honey Bunny | Raj & DK’s Spy Thriller Is Their Most Generic Work Yet

This is #CriticalMargin where Ishita Sengupta gets contemplative over new Hindi films and shows.

Ishita+Sengupta

Nov 07, 2024

Poster detail. Citadel: Honey Bunny

OF THE MANY THINGS that distinguishes Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K from other filmmakers is that even their most passable works invite intrigue. One can write pages on Go Goa Gone (2013) and The Family Man (2019) but something like Guns & Gulaabs the 2023 series that needed more legs to stand on the whimsy it was built on, is also imbued with moments rare to come by. The upshot of this is a sense of disorientation where one’s reaction to their creation is in constant flux. Citadel: Honey Bunny, an offshoot of the sprawling American espionage series Citadel (2023), is a fitting example of this. The six-episode show could be regarded as one of their most trite collaborations and yet dotted across the runtime are instances capable of undoing that reading.

Examples are plenty, like the kinetic chase sequence in the first episode or the artful use of Hindi films songs which supply cultural contexts. The action straddles between two timelines — 1992 and 2000 — and the music is shaped by purpose. In 2000 when a group of hired assassins kidnap Bunny, a former agent (Samantha Ruth Prabhu), the song playing in the car is Sapne Mein Milti Hain from Ram Gopal Varma’s 1998 genre-defying gangster drama, Satya. One can sense that the choice is intentional, driven by their desire to appear cool in their heads. Later Raat Baaqi Baat Baaqi scores the action, foreboding a crucial theme in the show that was central in Namak Halaal (1982), the film in which the song originally featured. An ambiguous man is shown to be listening only to ghazals– his goals as difficult to read as his preferred melody.

There is also the attentive use of actors like Parmeet Sethi as a sleaze businessman, Soham Majumdar as an acrid tech genius and Saqib Saleem, a revelation really, as a disgruntled agent hungry for love. Then there is Kay Kay Menon, an actor incapable of being bad. He plays Guru, leader of the pack heading his own team against the globe-trotting, stateless spy network, Citadel. To assemble his group, he brings orphans from homes and gives them a sense of love and belonging, only to use their loyalty to his advantage. It is a dubious role and the actor is tremendous in his turn, marinating each syllable coming out of his mouth in spite and love. He ends all his sentences with a heartfelt, “beta” and yet makes it sound like an afterthought every time.

With Citadel: Honey Bunny the filmmaker duo also bring back their signature one-takes. There are two long, unbroken shots in the series, one in episode 3 and the other in the concluding episode, and each surpasses the other in their ambition and scope of mounting (Johan Heurlin Aidt of Delhi Crime fame is the cinematographer). It would be easy to dismiss them as reiterations but the style does not solely exist as showy embellishment. Instead, they are planned as primal to the world and the characters on display. Samantha proves to be particularly effective as an action star as she tackles men towering next to her with giant grit (Alia Bhatt from Jigra comes to mind only because both actors are used so differently and potently).

Despite these bright spots Citadel: Honey Bunny unfolds largely as a flat thriller that will go down as a footnote in Raj & DK’s filmography. The series is wrapped in an impenetrable vagueness that makes it difficult to care and keeps the stakes constantly low. On paper, this comes with the territory. The outing is designed as one of the origin stories of the present timeline — Honey and Bunny’s daughter, named after the stuntwoman, Fearless Nadia, grows up to be Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) in Citadel— and shaped as a moving part in a beast that will spawn multiple moving parts. This detail, which could have evoked inventiveness, lends itself to ambiguity.

Most of the plot remains a blur and only some of it comes to light. There is a spy agency called Citadel, headed by Zooni (Simran in a damningly stilted turn) and Shaan (Sikandar Kher), and there is a rival agency by Guru and his men. Both are after an unknown surveillance technology, dubbed as ‘Armada’ which will help to trigger something ‘Project Talwar’ and if fallen in wrong hands, it could prove to be detrimental. In 1992, the tech was stolen and the search continues till 2000, propelling Honey to be on the run.

A lot of it hangs in the air, more crucial among them being the details of this technology and the clarity about who between them is in the wrong. For a thriller that depends a lot on rooting for the underdogs (Honey, played by a functional Varun Dhawan, and Bunny are strugglers; she a side actress and he a stuntman, who become agents to gain purpose in life), it commits an outrageous sin of never specifying who is who.

But if we remain clueless, I want to believe the series is no better. There is a difference between a show withholding information from its viewers and a show not knowing the information it wants to supply to its viewers. Citadel: Honey Bunny constantly comes across as the latter, resulting in an inelegance not often associated with Raj & DK. Everything feels like a build up and everyone a threat. Characters take turns to ask, ‘What is Project Talwar?’ and then reply with ‘What is Project Talwar’. Granted, the timeline helps as technology was still taking shape during the 90s’ but the writers have to do better than dubbing a supposedly world-altering mechanism as “tech”. The exposition (Sumit Arora has furnished the dialogues) is reminiscent of Ayan Mukerji’s last film where dialogues were a variation of ‘what is Brahmastra’.

It is easy to see Raj & DK’s involvement with the franchise (their long-time collaborator Sita R Menon has developed it). The filmmakers have not just redefined the genre but expanded its potential by revealing its local undersides. Their writing thrives in the duality that characters from such universes demand. And yet, this is the most generic they have been in a while. The kid in the show is annoyingly precocious and their trademark humour finds no space in the premise. It is almost vanilla, like a honey bunny.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of OTTplay. The author is solely responsible for any claims arising out of the content of this column.