Rashtra Kavach Om Movie Review: Aditya Roy Kapur comes in like a wrecking ball. In slo-mo. The End

Rashtra Kavach Om Movie Review: Aditya Roy Kapur's glistening biceps, though impressive, may not be strong enough to hold the weight of this strictly average actioner.

Miley Cyrus said ‘he came in like a wrecking ball’ in 2013. The makers of Rashtra Kavach Om could easily have used this instead of the (redundant) background score they opted for each time Aditya Roy Kapur broke into the frame with his more than dhai kilo ka haath. For Aditya really does come in like a wrecking ball. Every couple of minutes. With that background score - yes, the redundant one - announcing himself. Along with the orgasmic faces of bystanders looking at him in awe, almost foaming at the mouth. None of these bystanders are civilians marvelling at our hero’s superhuman strength, mind you. They are all RAW special agents, highly trained in combat. But Om doesn’t need backup, because woh akela hi kaafi hai.

When a Hindi film paints its hero such, you already know that it is time to deploy your willing suspension of disbelief. And you do, as Rashtra Kavach Om, starring Aditya Roy Kapur, Sanjana Sanghi, Ashutosh Rana, Prakash Raj, and Jackie Shroff, among others, starts to roll before your eyes on the big screen.

Om’s bat signal is ‘Hari Om’ - so when on a mission, four RAW commandos are brought to their knees by the enemy, screaming Hari Om is all it takes for the frame to freeze and Om to leap in and send said enemies flying, sometimes all at once. In a universe where RAW agents greenlight missions with ‘Jai Bhavani’, Hari Om can be the bat signal, no? But our Om isn’t just the destroyer, he will also walk out with rescued kids on his shoulders because humara kaam sirf maarna nahi hai, bachana bhi hai.

The kam is interesting, and the very premise of this nearly 3-hour-long batshi* action. Promising scientist promises to build a shield of sorts to defend India against nuclear attacks, scientist seemingly breaks the promise and flees the country to sell it to enemy nations and is thus branded gaddar, a special investigating team of RAW agents is put together to track the gaddar and bring home the shield. Operation Rashtra Kavach, hence the name.

However, it is as much the story of the Rashtra Kavach as it is of the Battle Within - which makes us feel that the makers need not have changed the name of the film, all so unceremoniously, at the very last minute. Aditya’s Om is central to both the Kavach procuring team and the gaddar scientist’s life story. And the battle within him is differentiating between a father (Jackie Shroff) who everybody sees as the villain and the father figure (Ashutosh Rana) who believes the father could do no wrong.