Director: Apoorva Lakhia

Derring-do by Indian TV journo cleans up a nest of terrorists! At the headquarters of TV channel Al Johara in Istanbul!! Aided and abetted by a brave Turkish commando!!!

All those exclamation marks spill out of Apoorva Lakhia’s latest Mission Istaanbul, which takes a contemporary, cautionary tale of terror, and its modern-day purveyors, and serves it up lathered with so much leftover masala that it’s neither easily gobbled, nor thoughtfully chewed upon.

Take the leading man, for starters. Zayed Khan (yes, that’s right), plays Vikas Sagar, Aaj Tak reporter, who’s so famous in India that everyone knows his worth except his estranged wife-and-colleague at the same channel (Shriya). You can take Zayed as a likeable bumbling second lead, but as someone who has to contend with a ruthless Afghan terrorist (Shabbir), a scarlet-lipped cleavage-flashing Mata Hari-type, and a gun-toting local avenger (Vivek)? Surely Apoorva Lakhia was jesting.

While he’s at it, we get a muscled TV channel owner who welcomes his Indian guest into his glass-fronted multi-storied lair, first forbidding him to go to the, hold your breath, 13th floor of the building, because it’s secret, and then saying—ok guys, let’s party! The next thing, said reporter and boss are swaying with a curvy Turki belly dancer!! This follows some live action in an Afghani hideaway, where a burqa-clad woman is stoned to death, and American tourists are held to ransom, and men-in-flowing-headgear are mowed down by rattling machine guns!

Lakhia’s last, Shootout At Lokhandwala had enough grit, despite its raunchy item numbers, to be taken seriously. Here, he gets Zayed in a cute hair-cut and Vivek in a shoulder-length shag, to be boys with toys, and most of it is unintentionally hilarious, especially the climax in which Terrorist Top Dog and Enraged Journo batter each other with their fists, shirts off, just like good old Bollywood heroes and villains used to, decades ago.