Deadly keedas, dead hero

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Can archetypal cinema commute from its native land to wherever it pleases and become progeny of its adopted world? Few can, most can’t. And it doesn’t take more than a two-digit IQ to figure which one will work where. For example, a story about two bichhde bhai and frail, coughing mother won’t work in America or England. For that to happen, they’ll have to first suffer Partition, an amputated identity, communal riots, and live like refugees.
Similarly, stories of the entire nation being attacked by imaginary calamities and critters don’t work with us desis because, unlike America, we don’t live on an island and are not capitalists with more faith in technology than the power of maa, pyaar and tyaag.
We face threats for sure, but by mukaddar, dakus, goras, crowded melas, family dushmans and specific evil entities like aatmas, zealous neighbours, jealous ladies and greedy gents. But what’s at stake is not the life and limb of every pappu in our land, but pagri, parampara, prem and papaji. The trick with us is to pick the enemy carefully and to plant our hero in a real, familial context.
Azaan is American phobia of annihilation transported to India without a context, an enemy worthy of our loathing or even a valid explanation. And the Hindustani it has recruited for the fight is one sullen fellow who has no family and, frankly, no real reason to live. We don’t like dead heroes, and here the hero dies. Doing what? Chasing and fighting teeny-weeny keedas. Seriously.

Azaan is an itinerant, international thriller where all Indians, everywhere, are under threat from a certain gas and a certain liquid — the Ebola virus. The gas makes people bleed from all orifices, break into bloody boils and die. The injection turns people into zombies who later explode. These bioweapons are being used on ministers, NRIs and aam aadmi by a terrorist outfit headed by one “Doctor” (Sajid Hassan). He and his men are being paid to do so not by Osama or Pakistan, but by India’s real enemy which, according to the censor board, is “Beep”. (The Azaan PR people confirmed to me that, no, India is not under threat from a nation called Beep, but by its neighbour, China.)
The only man who can save India is Azaan Khan (Sachiin Joshi). Azaan has Allah ka haath on his head, and he often crinkles his kajrare naina, thinking he is boring holes into the enemy’s conscience. Only thing he is doing is boring you. To death. So, let’s call him Azzu.
Azzu is a recruit of two RAW blabbermouths — Ravi Kisen and Alyy Khan. These two incompetent men can’t handle the deadly virus as well as Doctor, so they are bossed around by Menon (Sarita Chowdhury), an officer from Interpol.
Azzu’s job is to get the antidote to Ebola from scientist Mahfouz (Dalip Tahil) and to blow Doctor’s cover. He triggers blasts in various places and infiltrates the ranks of terrorist groups. Azzu is doing RAW’s bidding because a) his younger brother is a terror suspect and Azzu wants to find him and clear his name, and b) because Azzu’s religion is used to challenge his loyalty to Bharat Mata. He is, after all, half-Indian, half-Afghani. 
All this clarity of plot and motive came to me close to the film’s climax. The film’s narrative is deliberately cryptic and confusing, but to no exciting end. Azaan flits between various locations — Germany, Morocco, France, India, Poland, Thailand, China, South Africa — where unknown characters are busy doing unexplained things. So, while Azzu is getting closer to Doctor, the Ebola virus is on its way to India. At the same time, Indians are exploding around the world and Azzu is haunted every sleeping moment by dreams of his little brother in Afghanistan, at the mercy of the Taliban...
Virus gets to India and Doctor gets to Mahfouz. Scientist taunts Doctor about not being able to get it up and taking his frustration out on the world. Scientist gets blown up. Azzu is nowhere close to finding the antidote or his brother. His search takes him to Morocco where he meets sand artist Afreen (Candice Boucher of Playboy fame) and her little sister whose blood is the antidote.
Azzu is drawn to Afreen like a magnet is to a fridge. But can a Playboy playmate be a desh bhakt’s wife. Not until the Karva Chauth gangs are around.

These multiple tracks, and the fact that director Prashant Chandha spent Rs 150 crore on taking Contagion-inspired Azaan hither and thither, could have engaged us if its story had a soul and its characters were more than one-word accounts.
It would have helped if there was, instead of gibberish about Mossad, FBI, CIA and MI6, and Ms Playmate pouting and rolling about, some explanation about why the Chinese were so keen to infect and kill Indians. Did they want the Gobi Manchurian recipe or just more real estate? I don’t know.
Azaan has lovely locations, foreign cast and crew, interesting background score, and it tries to imitate Hollywood’s staple spy-assassin thrillers. It has impressive stunts, some thrilling chases, exploding helicopters and humans, and beautiful, expansive cinematography. It even has a set of good looking terrorists. But its dreary pace and a manic depressive hero take the joy out of this grand construct.
Sachiin Joshi is pudgy, humourless, but does shooting, jumping stunts well.