Mr X review: All guns and no glory in Arya-Gautham Karthik's spy thriller

Mr X movie review: Director Manu Anand's Mr X, starring Arya, Gautham Karthik and Sarathkumar, is a spy thriller that aims to be Tamil cinema's answer to Mission: Impossible, Bourne and Bond films. It ends up being a spoof of all three.

In Short

• Mr X ends up as a spoof of spy thrillers
• The film stars Arya, Sarathkumar, Gautham Karthik and Manju Warrier
• The film shows RAW agents facing nuclear threat during Chennai G20 summit

At a time when Bollywood is obsessed with spy thrillers, Tamil cinema decided to skip the queue and aim straight for Hollywood. Director Manu Anand's Mr X tries to put itself on par with Mission Impossible, Bourne and Bond. The question: does it deliver? Not quite.

Gautham (Arya) is a RAW agent running undercover missions in Chennai. A nuclear device with plutonium capsules falls into the hands of antagonist Rana, who plans a nuclear attack on the city during the G20 summit. Standing in his way are RAW agents, with Amaran (Gautham Karthik) being the mastermind executing Rana's plan from the inside. Then there's Mr X (Sarathkumar), one of India's finest agents, who has been guarding the nuclear device for 20 years, and RAW chief Indira Verma (Manju Warrier) holding the operation together.

Nuclear attack, betrayals, gun fights, cross-country chases, a war with Pakistan — Mr X has subplots aplenty. In 2 hours and 33 minutes, you will get answers to all of them. But these answers come with a disclaimer: throw logic out of the window and just believe what the characters spell out. If you start finding errors, the list will never end.

Mr X moves from one twist to another at breakneck pace. The real twist, however, is that you'd have already figured out who's switching sides hours before the scene plays out. Take the group of RAW agents in Chennai, whose plans keep getting ambushed. You know someone on the team is leaking information. You just have to wait for the makers to tell you why — and when they do, the reasoning doesn't hold up.

This is the film's central problem. A gripping spy thriller needs twists you can actually buy. Manu Anand gets the twists right on paper, but none of them are believable. And when the reasoning is hollow, the twists mean nothing.

The film's most telling moment comes when the Prime Minister asks about the expected level of damage from the nuclear attack. It's a scene that should spell out the stakes in chilling detail. Instead, the answer is a single word: "Catastrophic." That's Mr X in a nutshell — big setups, empty payoffs.

The performances don't help either. Arya operates on one expression throughout, while Gautham Karthik never drops his never-ending smirk. Manju Warrier, as RAW chief Indira Verma, gets the meatiest role and makes the most of it. Athulya Ravi, Raiza Wilson, Anagha, Jayaprakash and Kaali Venkat are largely wasted. Sarathkumar gets a solid role, but his performance cannot salvage this mess.

Arul Vincent's cinematography takes the film across landscapes of Russia and India, giving it a visual ambition the script can't match. Dhibu Ninan Thomas's music tries hard to keep the energy up but feels like it's compensating for what's missing on screen.

Mr X also sets itself up for a sequel — something you see coming long before the credits roll. The film wants to be the next Bond — but ends up being a bad cover version nobody asked for.

- Ends