'Berlin' movie review: Slow-burn spy film takes you back to the '90s

Bollywood actor Rahul Bose in Atul Sabharwal's Berlin, which premiered at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles in 2023, and dropped on Zee5 on September 13. (Image courtesy Zee5)

Set in November 1993, writer-director Atul Sabharwal's 'Berlin' is a moody slow-burn spy thriller that remains confined to one city — Delhi — and mostly to one room — an interrogation room inside the intelligence "Bureau". There are at least five reasons to watch this film, which released on Zee5 on Friday, September 13:

1. 1990s nostalgia: The 1990s were a turbulent time in India and the world. The Berlin Wall had fallen in 1989, and nations as well as spy agencies around the world were remastering the global power dynamic. In India, economic liberalization in 1991 had started to change the way we lived and worked. Between 1989 and 1998, India had six different prime ministers. It was a different world, when traffic didn't choke Delhi roads as much and diesel-fuelled DTC buses were everywhere. Director Atul Sabharwal situates his Hindi spy film 'Berlin' in this world. But the '90s are not just the context of the 124-minute film starring Rahul Bose, Aparshakti Khurana and Ishwak Singh with a large and illustrious supporting cast (Kabir Bedi, Deepak Qazir), they are also its vibe.

Sabharwal has masterfully created times gone by in series and films like Prime Video's 'Jubilee' before. Here, everything from Aparshakti Khurana's haircut and moustache to shop signs in Delhi's Connaught Place and DTC buses remind you of this decade. What looks like a powder-green Contessa (made in India by Hindustan Motors between 1984 and 2002) has a prominent part, too. Also don't miss references to '90s newsmakers: then Russian President Boris Yeltsin, then US senator Joe Biden, Saddam Hussein who was still alive then, and economic liberalization that was beginning to make certain sections of people much more prosperous.

Delhi's Brutalist architecture gets a nod here, too (ironically, the filmmakers had to shoot some part of these segments in Bhopal, where they were able to find a more suitable expression of this UK-origin USSR-import).

2. The cast of Berlin: If you wanted confirmation that Kabir Bedi still looks dapper in a suit, look no further. He has a tiny role in 'Berlin', but it helps to set up two things: the cold detachment of the intelligence bureau he heads, and its desperation as intelligence agencies struggle to find their footing in the post-USSR world.

Ishwak Singh doesn't speak a word in the 124-minute film, but you can't look away when he's on screen. His on-screen chemistry with Aparshakti Khurana is compelling.

Rahul Bose as Jagdish Sondhi — a paranoid (he puts all-pins among his papers to know if anyone has tried to access them) intelligence officer who's messed up — is excellent as an oily cog in the intelligence wheel. He's officious with Pushkin but almost obsequious with Bedi. We never find out if he's the bad guy or good guy stuck in a bad situation. But there is an overwhelming sense that his actions are part of a major coverup.

There are a host of minor characters, also played by some excellent actors: Deepak Qazir as the head of the "wing", a rival intelligence group of the "bureau" in India, is interesting to watch.

Aparshakti Khurana in 'Berlin'. Director Atul Sabharwal explained in a media interview that he shot 'Berlin' in the anamorphic format to capture the verticality of Delhi's architecture - the format also gives the film it's moody, greenish cast that makes it feel like a Soviet-era film. (Image courtesy Zee5)

3. Discrimination check: Ishwak Singh's character in the film, Ashok, is driven by the desire to do something big. Most people, however, discount his abilities — and perhaps his intelligence — because he is deaf and mute. Of course, this turns out to be detrimental for the doubters. Singh's expressions in the film when he gets to show off to Pushkin how he outsmarted trained intelligence officers and beat them at their own game to help the girl he liked — his sense of pride — are memorable.

To be sure, this is not the first time Bollywood is telling us to take people with disabilities more seriously. But it is a refreshing reminder.

Both Khurana and Singh learnt sign language for the film. In an interview to a radio channel, they said their sign-language trainer had explained how quickly sign language evolves and how what they had learnt too would become obsolete soon!

Aparshakti Khurana plays Pushkin, a sign language teacher and interpreter who gets embroiled in an intelligence plot. (Image via Zee5)

4. Berlin movie plot: Here's the story of 'Berlin', in brief: A deaf-mute man Ashok Kumar (Ishwak Singh) has been arrested by an intelligence agency for possession of a German Mauser gun and on suspicion of being a KGB/ISI/CIA spy. A sign-language interpreter Pushkin Verma (Aparshakti Khurana) is brought in to interrogate him. Jagdish Sondhi (Rahul Bose) is an intelligence officer with the 'Bureau' that is running the investigation. Things become more and more complicated as Ashok and Pushkin strike up a rapport, and it becomes known that Sondhi fell prey to a honeytrap that left the sensitive documents exposed. Things also become murkier as the interrogation swings between unveiling the truth and pinning the blame on Ashok if things go south.

Much of the action in the film takes place inside the interrogation room, but there are also snatches of peak 1990s' nostalgia when the characters step out. Brutalist architecture, an import from the erstwhile USSR and redolent of power in the Capital, looms large here as the intelligence bureau office. Connaught Place features prominently in a couple of scenes where the writer-director is situating Berlin cafe as a meeting place for spies of various agencies. And DDA-style flats and old DTC diesel buses and bus stops in south Delhi take us back to the turbulent '90s.

Sabharwal does take some creative licence, though: the photographs used to blackmail Sondhi are black and white. In the '90s, colour photos were everywhere, and if memory serves, were cheaper than black-and-white prints.

Without giving away the ending, the premise here is that a top-secret itinerary of a visiting foreign dignitary has been leaked, and the intelligence agency needs a scapegoat.

Ishwak Singh in writer-director Atul Sabharwal's 'Berlin'. (Image courtesy Zee5)

5. Berlin movie writer director: Atul Sabharwal has directed seven videos, series and films so far, but as a writer he has more stellar shows under his belt. Case in point: Prime Video's 'Jubilee', the period drama about a Bollywood studio in the late 1940s-1950s (incidentally, he saw Aparshakti Khurana's screen test for 'Jubilee' and approached him for 'Berlin'). He also wrote and directed 'Class of '83', starring Bobby Deol. It's no wonder then that in an exclusive interview with Moneycontrol, actor Rahul Bose said that the excellent writing was one of the key reasons he chose to do the Hindi spy film!