Operation Parindey: 24 Hour Jailbreak Thriller on ZEE5

With the boom in streaming content, it becomes difficult to track the right stories on the various platforms. I recently came across the title “Operation Parindey”, a jailbreak web movie streaming on ZEE5 and decided to see the same. The Janta curfew helped. This is my review of the film.

I have always liked jailbreak stories (of course my favourite like most of you would be ‘The Shawshank Redemption‘). Jailbreak movies are thrillers, at least most of them are, and Operation Parindey on ZEE5 ticks many of the boxes. Starring Amit Sadh (a brainy no-nonsense cop) and Rahul Dev (A self-styled Babaji/terrorist), the movie keeps you edgy and hooked throughout, despite probably made on a low budget without any CGX.

The story begins at a jail in rural Punjab, where Babaji (reel name Monty Singh), preaches worldly wisdom to all its inmates including the slow on the uptake police officials. We come to know that Babaji is a terrorist arrested for the setting of serial blasts. It’s the day of the langar (Sunday) at the jail, the policemen are lazily making preparations, and the security at the perimeter is lax.

Things happen quickly, a few men dressed as police officials enter the jail in their vehicles, supposedly to transfer some prisoners and immediately start firing. After a couple of minutes of exchanging fire, the few policemen are made to take cover. In the ensuing melee, the vehicles leave the compound with a couple of prisoners and Babaji.

At this stage, I was wondering about my choice of watching this movie. Did it merit further watching? The action was not as slick as some blockbusters, but I decided to continue watching because this was more realistic. I was not disappointed. What follows is a 24-hour operation to catch one of the most dreaded terrorists on Indian soil.

Special officer Abhinav Mathur (Amit Sadh) lands up with the case and at the jail within hours. He has strict orders to not waste time and apprehend the terrorist to avoid further attacks. Using the closed-circuit cameras, a bit of brainpower and chance findings, Mathur with his team get down to identifying how the jailbreak happened. They round up the jail staff and find that a few of them were coerced by Babaji’s moral preaching into helping the prisoners escape.

An element of surprise and comedy is introduced into how Mathur uses fear of sodomy to break the conspirators when third-degree doesn’t work. The terrorists meanwhile are on the run, splitting up, changing cars and turning off their mobile phones to avoid being tracked, all the while being guided by the spiritual terrorist. One of the attackers in the jail is Parminder (Aakash Dahiya), himself an inmate who Baba helped escape and is repaying the favour.

The rest of the movie is how they are tracked down with the collaboration of the police departments across Punjab, Haryana and Delhi within 24 hours.

I particularly liked the scene where SP Komal Bhardwaj (Rucha Inamdar in a superb role) coolly spews venom without appearing threatening while apprehending Parminder. Parminder had thrown caution to the winds and activated his cell phone, thus allowing the police officials to track him.

Meanwhile, Babaji has a satellite phone through which he has planned to escape the country through Goa to London. He also sets in motion a plan to divert the attention of the Cops to allow for his escape. How Amit Mathur stays a step ahead while understanding the psyche of the terrorist makes for an edge of the seat entertainment.

Operation Parindey is crisp with a run time of only 55 minutes and is based on an actual jailbreak which happened in Nabha, Punjab in 2016.

What I liked about Operation Parindey

Short run time, crisp editing, no-nonsense storytelling without the frills and unnecessary side-stories.

What I did not like about Operation Parindey

The action sequences at the beginning (have explained in the review above), dialogue writing could have been better.

My rating – 4 out of 5.