'Aiyaary' movie review: A clever thriller for whodunit fans

Directed by Neeraj Pandey, 'Aiyaary' falls in the genre of films like 'A Wednesday', 'Baby', and 'Special 26'.

Aiyaary is an espionage thriller about two Indian army officers, Colonel Abhay Singh (Manoj Bajpai) and his subordinate Major Jai Bakshi (Siddharth Malhotra). The two officers are a part of a military intelligence unit called DSD - Data & System Diagnostics. The motive of this unit is to put important numbers on surveillance and tap phones to gain important information.
The two officers have a fallout after Jai happens to lay his hands on an earth-shattering information regarding the Indian army while tapping a phone. This leads Jai to go against the whole system. He does a disappearing act and eventually Abhay is assigned to trace Jai. He is given 36 hours to get to Jai, who is the only one who knows of the dirty secret that can bring down the whole government.
Screenplay
The screenplay of Aiyaary seems to be lengthy, tiring, and confusing. The film will interest an audience which prefers a clever thriller over drab romantic sagas. However, this seems to be the film's biggest drawback.
Dialogue
Though the film has no hard-hitting dialogues, there are a few catchy lines in some scenes. But if you buy a ticket expecting to enjoy some to-be-remembered-forever dialogues, then you might certainly be disappointed.
Music
As the film is set in the backdrop of military intelligence, there is hardly any scope left for any foot-tapping numbers. Moreover, music in such movies is a sensitive area and has to be dealt with according to the theme of the movie. However, there is still some scope to play the cards which the music directors seem to have missed by putting an average song in a romantic situation between Siddharth and Rakul. This could have certainly been a crowning glory for the movie.
Action
The film with army backdrop might raise your expectations to witness some good action sequences, but you will feel dejected as there is no action here. Besides a few shooting scenes, the film is only about chasing each other. Disappointing!
Acting

All the cast of Aiyaary have tried to give their best in the film. However, the movie solely revolves around Manoj Bajpai and Siddharth Malhotra. Naseerudin Shah and Anupam Kher have been underplayed in the movie with their cameos. Rakul has some significant role as she plays Siddharth's lover but Pooja can be seen doing some touch-and-go scenes. Don't know why she accepted this one.
Editing
Editing has proved to be the 'black sheep' of the film. The 2-hour-40-minute-long film seemed to be never-ending, thanks to weak editing, else Aiyaary could be wrapped up in 1 hour and 45 minutes. Some of the sequences in the second half could have been done away with, such as the flashback of Manoj and Siddharth, which eats up over 15 minutes of narrative.
Direction
I will say very bad. Neeraj is making all the films on one story only but surely, this one is the weakest of films coming from Neeraj Pandey.
Verdict
This film may be liked by a thin section of audience of high-end multiplexes, particularly who love 'whodunit' type of cinema and that won't be enough to recover it's heavy cost. So I will suggest you to avoid it to save your time and money.
Rating: 1*
Duration: 2 hours 40 minutes
Cast: Manoj Bajpai, Siddharth Malhotra, Anupam Kher, Naseeruddin Shah, Rakul Preet Singh and Pooja Chopra