Baby (2015 Hindi film)


Baby is a 2015 Indian Hindi-language action thriller film written and directed by Neeraj Pandey. The film stars Akshay Kumar in the lead role, along with Taapsee Pannu, Rana Daggubati, Danny Denzongpa, Anupam Kher, Mikaal Zulfiqar, Kay Kay Menon, Madhurima Tuli and Rasheed Naz in supporting roles. Made on a budget of, the film released on 23 January 2015 to generally positive reviews from critics, who particularly praised the direction and Kumar's performance.

Plot

The plot follows the last mission of Baby; a temporary task force headed by Feroz Ali Khan formed in response to the 2008 Mumbai attacks whose job is to find and eliminate terrorists who are planning attacks in India.
While attempting to rescue a fellow Indian security agent in Turkey, Ajay Singh Rajput captures a traitor Jamal who formerly worked under Ajay and threatens to kill his family unless he gives him the information about the terror attack plan. Ajay is told about a terrorist plot to cause a bomb blast in a Delhi mall which he and Jai are able to prevent. In the process Ajay learns that this was only the first, of a series of massive attacks that have been planned. Pakistan based terrorist mastermind, Maulana, is causing trouble near the India-Pakistan border. He plans and executes a daring prison escape plan for Bilal Khan. A team of officers, led by Ajay is dispatched to interrogate Taufiq, an ISI agent posing as a local Muslim leader. Ajay manages to get information on the local contact Javed after torturing him. They go to Javed's hideout, but things go haywire when all of the squad members except Ajay are killed in an explosion, along with Javed. They are able to retrieve a name from Javed's laptop, and to collect further information from that terrorist logistics planner, Ajay and Shabana Khan travel to Nepal pretending to be husband and wife. Their plan to capture the logistics planner Wasim Sheikh goes awry when he finds out that Shabana is an undercover officer. Still, Shabana manages to hold Wasim and Ajay arrives to find that Shabana has knocked him unconscious.
As per the information given by Wasim, Feroz sends Ajay, Jai and Shukla to meet their deep asset Ashfaq in Saudi, Al-Dera where Bilal is holding meetings to discuss the funding and execution of their plans. Ajay and Jai break into Bilal's room after the meeting with the help of Shukla and kill Bilal. As they are about to return, they find that Maulana is also at the suite. Jai knocks him out and they decide to bring Maulana back to India, under the pretext that he is a relative who needs to visit India for an urgent liver transplant. They manage to get a visa from the local authorities for Maulana with Ashfaq's help.
Soon, the hotel security discovers the corpse of Bilal. The police authorities put the police chief Hanif Mohammad in charge of investigating the crime. He attempts to track down the murderers quickly and identifies them as Indian agents. He then contacts ATC to stop the plane boarded by Ajay and his team, but when he sees a newspaper which reveals that Maulana and Bilal were terrorists and had an international bounty on their head, he smiles and lets the plane take off.
Maulana is finally brought to India. This is kept a secret. After six weeks of interrogation by Indian Army in Srinagar, he is Jailed. The trial run is successful and Baby is given permanent status. The team celebrates it.

Cast

Baby was produced under T-Series along with Crouching Tiger, Friday Filmworks and Cape of Good Films.
The filming began on 4 September 2014, in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh. Some filming was done in Gautam Buddha University, at Meditation Hall, Shanti Sarover and Library, at Greater Noida. The second part was shot in Nepal and the team completed their final schedule in Abu Dhabi in October. Some parts were also shot in Istanbul.
Sajjad Delafrooz was hired to play the role of the Saudi doctor.

Soundtrack

The songs for the film features songs composed by MM Keeravani and Meet Bros Anjjan. Lyrics were written by Manoj Muntashir.
The film score was composed by Sanjoy Chowdhury.

Release and reception

Critical response

Baby was released to positive reviews.
Subhash K. Jha gave the film 4.5 stars out of 5 and stated "Baby is one helluva roller-coaster ride. Miss it at your own risk." Sarita A Tanwar of Daily News and Analysis gave the movie 4 stars, describing Akshay Kumar's performance in the movie as his career-best. Anuj Kumar of The Hindu summarized the film as "A gripping espionage thriller that eschews drama and jingoism". Srijana Mitra Das of The Times of India also gave it 4 stars out of 5 and said, "Akshay Kumar is terrific as Ajay whose core of steel you can almost feel". Hindustan Times gave the movie 4 stars out of 5 too, calling the film "sleek, well-timed and engaging." Yahoo Movies gave the film 4 stars and wrote, "The film deals with a definite conflict, backs it up with a coherent plot trajectory and delivers a compelling resolution." Anupama Chopra gave the film 3.5 stars and stating that the movie will make the viewers forget Akshay's cinematic misdemeanours. Rajeev Masand gave the film 3 stars, hailing its action sequences and performance of the cast. Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express gave the film 2 stars. However, Gupta praised Akshay Kumar's performance. Devesh Sharma of Filmfare praised the breathtaking action of the movie and gave it 3 stars. Ritika Handoo of Zee News hailed the movie as an entertaining movie which is a must-watch. Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV gave the movie two stars calling the movie as politically dodgy in spite of being a smartly-packaged, competently shot espionage thriller. Shubha Shetty-Saha of Mid Day gave the movie 4 stars, calling it a must-watch movie. Mihir Fadnavis of Firstpost didn't give positive reviews to the plot but praised the movie as entertaining and fast-paced. Mayank Shekhar of ABP News gave 3 stars and wrote that the film manages to hold viewers attention. Abhishek Gupta of India TV said the film is "fast-paced and entertaining" and that it "goads by making a point that while America executed their plan to kill the 9/11 mastermind in Abbottabad, here our politicians could just make loud promises " about the 26/11 attacks. Bollywood Hungama praised the "exceptional" cinematography; the "extremely gripping" storyline, which makes appropriate use of the actors; the score, which "instills the necessary emotions"; and Kumar's performance. It concluded, "On the whole, Baby is one of the finest films ever made in the history of Indian cinema" and gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars. R. M. Vijayakar of The New Indian Express gave 3.5 ratings calling it "that near-perfect textbook espionage thriller we have been dying to see: straight and business-like, fast-paced, without frills, and immaculately detailed to the point of occasional verbosity"

Ban in Pakistan

Baby was banned in Pakistan by the censor boards in Islamabad and Karachi, which said that "it portrays a negative image of Muslims and the negative characters in the film also have Muslim names".

Box office

Bollywood Hungama estimated the opening day at. International Business Times said the film had "tremendous growth" over the weekend and that its first weekend total was.

Spin-offs

A prequel/spin-off titled Naam Shabana was released on 31 March 2017. The film features Tapsee Pannu as Shabana Khan in the lead and Akshay Kumar in an extended supporting cameo role.
Neeraj Pandey is planning four more spin-offs based on different characters from the film.

Game

An official game based on this film has been released by Vroovy, for Android mobile phone users.

Awards and nominations