Hindi cinema has spent years being asked to prove its loyalties. Akash A Kaushik’s Udta Teer, fronted by Ayushmann Khurrana, arrives with a simpler offer: a spy comedy that would rather make you laugh than hand out a certificate of patriotism. The review by Filmy Sasi gives it four stars and treats it as a small restoration of an older, more mischievous Bollywood.
A comedy of errors before the mission
Khurrana plays Vikrant, a gifted officer in India’s Counter Terrorism Squad. The twist, revealed early, is that Vikrant is really Bilal Ahmed, a covert Pakistani agent working inside India. A road accident leaves Bilal with amnesia and his colleague Burman in a vegetative state. From there, the film strips the spy genre of its seriousness and turns Bilal’s forgotten allegiance into a comedy of errors.
The review highlights the first hour as the film’s strongest: the spoofs of Dharma Productions hits, the yesteryear chartbusters woven into the score, and the pleasure of watching a spy film refuse to take itself too seriously. The recurring line — “mulk ke aage kuch nahin” — becomes part of the joke about who belongs to which nation.
Why the no-manifesto tone matters
For an Indian production in the current climate, the film’s politics are notable mostly for their absence. It pokes fun at Pakistan — the Pakistani Prime Minister complains, “Is mulq mein shareef ki koi qadar”, and the Army Chief bows to the Chinese President over a phone call — but it avoids the familiar speech about one side being principled and the other not.
Filmy Sasi argues that Udta Teer resembles the Bollywood of Priyadarshan and Abbas-Mustan: mainstream entertainment before sloganeering and ideological purity tests became the organising principle. That sense of calibration comes from its two production sensibilities: Sikhya’s quirk and pace, alongside Dharma’s gloss, emotions and catchy music. Sara Ali Khan, often framed as a Dharma recruit, gets a role with agency and performs well; Mukul Dev, in what the review calls perhaps a career-best turn, is unrecognisable.
What keeps it aloft
- Khurrana’s action-comedy ease, which the review links to his under-appreciated An Action Hero.
- Suhail Nayyar’s love-hate chemistry with Khurrana, called a genuine trump card.
- A supporting cast — Ram Kapoor, Gulshan Grover, Rahul Bose and Sandeep Anand — that gets room to play.
The review is candid about the film’s limitation: when the plot must return to espionage, the tonal shift is jarring. A key character’s death lands with more emotional conviction than War 2, but the film does grow more conventional before the final prank restores the mischief.
The verdict
Four stars, in Filmy Sasi’s assessment, is a reminder that Bollywood has not entirely lost its way amid franchise hysteria. Udta Teer may retreat into familiar narrative territory, but it remains, by the review’s account, Hindi cinema’s most complete commercial outing of 2026 so far — provided no one insists on a Phir Se Udta Teer.
Source: Filmy Sasi
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