In Marvel’s latest, Deadpool says to Wolverine, “You’ve joined at a low point.” I want to say that to the Janhvi Kapoor starrer Ulajh as well.

The Sudhansu Saria-directed spy thriller does indeed arrive at a time when Bollywood is churning out either offensive or disappointing films. Amidst all that, Ulajh was a promising effort that worked for me, even with its complex yet not-quite-intelligent plot, and some wasted potential.

Kapoor is Suhana Bhatia, a young twenty-something, who is a legacy in Indian Foreign Services. Her grandfather, we’re told, is all over school civic textbooks, and her father has an incredible service record as a diplomat and ambassador. And the seemingly capable Suhana wants to make her pops proud like her life depends on it. A promotion takes her to London, where the men in her office quickly dub her a nepotism hire who could’ve probably slept her way to the position. Amongst them is the guy whose promotion she snatched, Jacob Tamang (Meiyang Chang), and his pal, Sebin Kutty (a fun Roshan Mathew).

So when Suhana lands in the eponymous ulajh that is entangled with India and Pakistan’s diplomatic relations, the ISI, and a couple of dead bodies, it’s not like she has friends who she can trust to have her back. Nor does she feel like she can tell her father for fear of jeopardising his career too. So WWSD? What will Suhana Do?

Ulajh takes generous time with its buildup, which I didn’t mind all that much because Janhvi Kapoor is extremely watchable, even if her immaculately made-up face and on-point outfits (I’d like that some of that workwear, please!) kind of bring you out of the film. She looks a bit too good for this high-stress job?

When the pace is slow, you tend to nitpick little things. Like, why someone supposedly sharp like Suhana, who had personnel files on even her driver before she took charge of her office, wouldn’t do a background check on all the people she engaged with in the course of her life in London? Why are sensitive information and high-security areas so easily accessible? Why has a good actor like Meiyang Chang only been given, like, three lines to speak in the entire film?

But what kept me engaged was also Janhvi Kapoor, who plays Suhana with conviction. She has had a steady growth graph with each film she’s chosen. Much like Suhana, she too bears the nepo baby tag, but her choices and effort seem to set her apart from her contemporaries. I won’t rush into calling Ulajh her career best, because I simply enjoy witnessing her improve a little with every film, and there’s more to come. Much like there’s more to come for Suhana.

Every other supporting act in this ensemble cast — Adil Hussain, Rajesh Tailang, Jitendra Joshi, Rajendra Gupta, and Rushad Rana are actors who’ve done this many times over, and they’re as satisfactory as you can be when you’re minor acts playing around one major character. They don’t quite have much to do except prattle off information — or in Himanshu Malik’s case, maintain stoic silence — because the bulk of the heavy lifting is Janhvi’s.

But let’s talk about Gulshan Devaiah, who, can I just say, is a scene-stealer and incredibly sexy as Nakul. His chemistry with Janhvi is one of the most potent elements of Ulajh. Then again, this man could have chemistry with a pen if he wanted to! The song ‘Shaukan’ plays during their whirlwind dating moments and it’s a song that grew on me, just as ‘Aaja Oye’ does in the end credits.

But their characters’ relationship gave me whiplash with how quickly it went from one point to another. It nagged me if Suhana even was smart enough for this gig because her choices made her look extremely green, and her mistakes were the mistakes of youth. But towards the end of the film, I realised — and this could be me reading into this a bit — that probably that was the whole point.

This was a trial by fire of her potential, of how quickly she could recover from her mistakes, probably prepping her for more instances where she’d have to choose between what is right and what is easy. And maybe the next time she’d be prepared.

I firmly believe, that had the writing been a little sharper, building the film into a slick, atmospheric thriller with stronger espionage elements (written by Parveez Shaikh and Saria, with dialogues by Atika Chohan), Janvhi’s acting chops would’ve been better tested, and her improvement perhaps stood out starker. You can see glimpses of it in the film’s final lap when the action moves from London to India.

And that’s the one thing that I often feel peeved about in Indian films which usually end effort where they actually need to double it. If we’re going to make an espionage thriller about agencies like RAW, the ISI, political coups, and international affairs, let’s try and aim at being more intelligent in our bearings than your basic A-lister franchise spy universe fare.

Every time I jump into a season of, say, a Jack Ryan, who also goes beyond his desk job as a CIA analyst, it compels me to sit up and pay attention to the geopolitics and the inner workings of these clandestine agencies instead of just taking whatever’s happening at face value. I want Indian espionage thrillers to stop banking on emotion or likeable characters alone and challenge me, and trust that its audience, like Suhana, has the potential to come through.

I’d give Ulajh anywhere between a 2.5 to a 3 because, despite its shortcomings, it had me seated. And I’d love to see more, aforementioned conditions apply.