Won't exactly call this Zero Dark Tatti; hell, no. This is a half competent picture, as against a complete washout. It is set up as a man-hunt for 'India's Most Wanted'. That epithet usually belongs to the absconding Dawood Ibrahim. The analogy the filmmakers use is of 'India's Osama Bin Laden'.

Filmmaker Rajkumar Gupta is known to have done exhaustive research for India's Most Wanted for a year and a half. Then, it took him close to two years to write it down. He often directs his own scripts and this film is no different. Arjun Kapoor plays the undercover protagonist who leads a team of five agents in disguise in the heart of Bihar and Nepal to find one dreaded terrorist. How they execute their plan and nab the terrorist forms the story of the film.

With India's Most Wanted, director Raj Kumar Gupta does the impossible. He makes suspense look boring. And convoluted. And painfully monotonous, like a Neeraj Pandey thriller on a bad (good?) day. The plot, inspired by true events, revolves around a four-day manhunt for a mysterious terrorist ("Ghost") by a covert Bihar police outfit in Nepal. But the film is designed in a way that makes us doubt the truth of these events.

Raj Kumar Gupta's India's Most Wanted ventures into a unique premise of five unsung heroes capturing the country's 'Most Wanted Terrorist'. It has all the ingredients of being India's answer to Zero Dark Thirty. Alas! What could have been extraordinary cinema pans out as part-predictable-part-thrilling fare. Prabhat Kapoor (Arjun Kapoor) is an intelligence officer based in Patna, who's got a tip-off about the whereabouts of India's Osama, the man behind the several bomb blasts in the country between 2008 and 2013, leaving hundreds of civilians dead.

INDIA'S MOST WANTED is the story of a sensational capture of a terrorist. Prabhaat Kapoor (Arjun Kapoor) is an intelligence official based in Bihar and has the reputation of capturing several high-profile criminals. He one day gets a tip from a mysterious source (Jitendra Shastri) about a dreaded terrorist's hideout in Nepal. This terrorist is none other than Yusuf (Sudev Nair), who has masterminded several terrorist attacks in India.

Based on real life events - the serial blast carried out by Yasin Bhatkal and how a brave heart Indian officer Prashant Kapoor (Arjun Kapoor) along with his special paanch (five member team) took it as a mission to catch the dreaded terrorist labeled as India's Osama Bin Laden.

It all starts with people having fun at a hotel, with a soothing song playing in the background and a sudden blast. In the next scene, we see the character played by Rajendra Gupta sarcastically firing shots at his team for letting all these blasts happening over the country. Enters Rajesh Singh (Rajesh Sharma) who is a boss to one 'pagal' (mad) undercover agent Prabhat (Arjun Kapoor).

This is an important film because it tells the story of how vulnerable we, as a nation, were a decade ago. How a series of bomb blasts across various Indian cities, conducted by a man with radical leanings left thousands killed and maimed. When this tale of terror is recounted on screen starting with the Pune blast, you feel scared.

Hot on a dreaded terrorist's trail, an intelligence team provides minute-by-minute updates to their superior: He is standing at the bus stop. He got into the bus. The bus is moving. He is moving. Keep distance. He got off one stop early. Taking directions from Google Maps is more exciting than director Rajkumar Gupta evoking the ground reality of a day in the lives of IB officers.

Indian intelligence officials and globe-trotting espionage agents have in recent years become a Bollywood fixation, but from the Saif Ali Khan-Kareena Kapoor-starrer Agent Vinod in 2012, to Baby (2015) with Akshay Kumar in the lead, and last year's Aiyaary headlined by Manoj Bajpayee and Sidharth Malhotra, these films have tended to kick off with a promising premise and then struggle to be anything much beyond that. India's Most Wanted (IMW) goes down the same path.

Based on the true story of the painstaking search-and-capture of a dreaded terrorist, India's Most Wanted has what it takes for a solid spy thriller : a 'fidayeen' bomber bent upon destroying India, the coming together of a team under a strong leader, the bureaucratic reluctance to go out on a limb for brave soldiers even if it means getting rid of a dreaded enemy, and the senior official in between these two forces who plays go-between.

India's Most Wanted opens with a scene of the deadly blasts that took place in Pune's famous German Bakery followed by a series of blasts that ripped across the country-in Hyderabad, in Jaipur and so on. The terror plot-frame set firmly in place; the film is quick to cut to the chase with Prabhat Kapoor (Arjun Kapoor), an intelligence officer on the trail of 'India's Osama' who thinks nothing of spilling the blood of innocents.

Inspired by true events, the film follows a group of intelligence officers led by Prabhat (Arjun Kapoor) who track down India's most wanted terrorist and capture him without the help of weapons, monetary support or their own organisational backup.

Raj Kumar Gupta has style. I loved the cuts to music in Aamir, the slow-burn intensity of No One Killed Jessica, the convoluted whimsy of Ghanchakkar. I'm therefore disappointed by India's Most Wanted, a well-meaning thriller too restrained to be memorable. While the basic idea is fine - a ragtag team of unimpressive men setting out to capture "India's Osama" - there is little that leaves an impact.

The Man With No Face. The man who doesn't have a face. No one has seen him in more than a decade. But wherever he goes, he leaves destruction in his wake. Who is this man, India's Most Wanted, who has held the country captive for over a decade with serial blasts, deaths and devastation? After a series of blasts in Pune, the IB (Intelligence Bureau) and RAW (Reseach and Analysis Wing) are in the dock.