Umro Ayyar: A New Beginning (UA) has received polarising reviews. The difference of opinion comes from two factions of the audience: those who have seen the film and like it (it is an equal divide, for now), and those who have not seen the film and want to praise it for being different and upping the standards of Pakistani movies.

Let’s start with the positives.

UA is an epic fantasy about a super-secret society of warriors for good who are fighting against an evil army that wants to take over the world. This genre and the approach to the story is hardly — if ever — explored in Pakistani movies. Sticking to the “Hero’s Journey”, a narrative structure popularised by Joseph Campbell, the film follows storytelling tropes that may seem familiar to people who watch high concept Hollywood films.

The visual effects are very well done, though for a film that focuses on a battle between good and evil, and features malevolent djinns, shouldn’t the visual effects — being the selling point of the film — be good by default?

UA also has good performances, in parts. Usman Mukhtar, as the lead Amar, plays a professor who digs into the mysteries of space, time and parallel dimensions, and soon realises that he is the son of an esteemed warrior (Adnan Siddiqui), and is likely a prophesied hero for the Ayyars (the aforementioned secret clan on the side of good).

Umro Ayyar: A New Beginning has good visual effects and good performances in parts, but is let down by constrained production design and a compromised screenplay

Other good performances come from Farhan Tahir playing the villains’ chief Laqqa, Manzar Sehbai as “Guru” who has confidence in Amar’s prophecy, and Ali Kazmi playing the crack-shot fighter Maaz who questions the legitimacy of the prophecy.

Hamza Ali Abbasi, dressed and swaggering like a poor man’s Jack Sparrow, uplifts the film in his late entry as the fabled Umro Ayyar — a character we’re likely to see in the sequel.

Now that the good is out of the way, let’s discuss the bad.

For those wondering, yes, the premise sounds like an action cartoon from the ’80s — however, given the nostalgia mode millennials are in right now (thanks in part to comic book movies, sequels and reboots), I don’t know whether that could be counted as a bad thing.

The light set-ups, primarily in the opening segment of the film, are atrocious. Bad light design had been a problem in director Azfar Jafri’s Sher Dil as well; that film was also shot by Riki Butland, a cinematographer from Hollywood who also dabbled in Bollywood (he was the camera operator in Star Trek Beyond and Priyadarshan’s film Tezz).

Production design, while adequate, is relegated to just a handful of sets. The film features 12 to 14 sets, if one counts them all — Amar’s classroom, his room, the college library, the parking lot, an exterior location where he is saved from the villains by the Ayyars, about three rooms, a corridor and a circular training area in the heroes’ hidden fortress, Laqqa’s low-budget lair, his ritual site where the climax happens, and about three or four CGI-environments, including the djinn’s dimension Koh-i-Qaf. These are far too few sets for an epic fantasy film of two hours’ length.

While films have been made on fewer sets given their story’s requirement, the lack of sets in UA constricts the storytelling. Actors and scenes now have to be placed in these locations; the decision, inadvertently, introduces a storytelling element that kills any narrative: excessive exposition — ie long, talky scenes that fill screen time until an action sequence happens.

For an epic, fantasy “action” film, going this route is akin to suicide.

Once Amar finds himself in the Ayyars’ lair that is shielded by Guru’s abilities (all great Ayyars, we learn, have different powers), the characters start on a long series of information dumps. These dumps introduce plot threads that will likely be wrapped up in sequels… if UA is a success, business-wise.

Depending on sequels to carry a film’s weight is far from a smart storytelling decision. Even Marvel Studios didn’t indulge in this practice in its first phase. The first Iron Man, for example, works as a solo film, as does the first Matrix, whose narrative structure is copied beat-by-beat in UA.

For example: Neo, a youngster who doesn’t believe, is found by “Guru” (Morpheus), who believes in the prophecy of a chosen saviour. The plot, then, has a betrayal, a sacrifice, a maddened villain, and the hero’s acceptance of his powers and destiny. Replace Matrix’s characters with UA’s and see the difference…if there is any.

Speaking of maddened villains: Farhan Tahir’s character, Laqqa, doesn’t get much to do for most of his appearances until, suddenly, he turns into an unhinged mad man who has a comedic streak. The transformation is awkward.

Tahir, at least, is given a segment to act out. Poor Sanam Saeed is either consigned to standing in the background or delivering dull-dialogues in duller scenes.

UA could have been saved if the film had been rewritten for effectiveness on paper. If the snags are taken care of in the screenplay stage, the burdens of a filmmaker’s job are lessened by a great many tons.

UA, instead, chooses to fix things on the set and in the edit. Unfortunately, no amount of editing or snappy, snazzy, visual effects, or high hopes and promises of “different” cinema, can compensate for a compromised screenplay.

Directed by Azfar Jafri, written by Atif Rehan Siddique and Executive Producer Huma Jamil Babar, Umro Ayyar: A New Beginning is rated “U” (suitable for audiences of all ages) by the Sindh Board of Film Censors

Published in Dawn, ICON, June 30TH, 2024