The Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas starrer big ticket spy action series on Prime, Citadel may not have engaged the audience as expected. But look alive, people, there's a new player on the block -- the Indian spinoff of the Russo Brothers' produced franchise, Citadel: Honey Bunny, headlined by actors Varun Dhawan and Samantha Ruth Prabhu. And even though this offshoot lacks a certain 'X' factor that you'd expect from its creator duo, Raj & DK, known for bringing for their standout contributions to this genre with series like Prime's Farzi and The Family Man, Honey Bunny is definitely an upgrade on its lacklustre American counterpart.
In case you need a refresher, Citadel is a clandestine spy organisation not tethered to any country, and working towards averting global crises (sometimes, even orchestrating them) to ensure peace. Their rivals are an organisation named Manticore, founded by powerful families with similar unchecked ambition. In the main series, we meet two agents from Citadel's elite tier, Mason Kane (Madden) and Nadia Sinh (Chopra), who are also romantically involved and share a daughter, Asha, whose existence is kept from Kane for years. We also discover that Nadia's father is quite an infamous spy named Rahi Gambhir (Paul Bazely), and one of the Citadel agents labels him an insurgent.
Citadel: Honey Bunny, then, is an origin story for a couple of people we met or heard of in the original series, like Nadia, Rahi, and Guru, who was name-dropped by Manticore in the same episode that Rahi appears. It's also a peek at a relatively less efficient Citadel and its rivals from a few years ago, as they try to get their hands on the tech that will make them the omnipresent and omniscient espionage powers that we eventually meet in the original series.
Set in the 90s, there's Nadia's papa, Rahi Gambhir AKA Bunny (Dhawan), a stuntman in Bollywood who side hustles as a spy agent for an organisation that is headed by Kay Kay Menon's Vishwa. Bunny is an orphan handpicked and trained by Vishwa (Kay Kay Menon), whom he calls "Baba" (father), an MO that is prevalent in how Vishwa builds his team. Alongside his fellow agents/friends Chacko (Shivankit Singh Parihar) and Ludo (Soham Majumdar), they're much like the 00 agents that MI6 picks, giving a sense of belonging and purpose to lost souls with no family or loved ones, minting in exchange their utter and unequivocal loyalty to the cause. For Bunny, whose the best of the best, that changes when he brings Honey into a reluctant Vishwa's all-male team before a critical mission, to help her earn some money.
Honey (Samantha) is a struggling actor and a literal princess from a state in Southern India, who isn't an orphan but never knew her father's love either. She tries her luck in Bollywood, and manages to become a background dancer at best. But she meets Bunny, who changes the course of her life forever. Honey enjoys playing an agent; after all, she's had to fend for herself her entire life, and realises it makes her just as strong as the men double her size. A little training montage, and we have Honey Bunny fall in love while she gets inducted and trained by Bunny for their next mission into becoming a damn good spy who can kick some serious ass.
But this isn't a happy story, and this series, written by Sita R. Menon, is nothing if not predictable. So you know where this is headed. Much like the original series, Citadel: Honey Bunny divides its time between multiple timelines -- the past, that shows us what happened on Honey and Bunny's last mission together, and the present, where the gang is all separated, and Honey is raising her 7-year-old daughter Nadia in hiding, while Bunny has no idea that she's alive or that he has a daughter. History does repeat itself in Citadel, doesn't it?
There are two ways to look at Citadel: Honey Bunny here. In comparison to its American counterpart, Honey Bunny one-ups it easily, and packs a better punch, pace, storytelling, and connection with its characters. There are also vestiges of Raj & DK's love for Indian cinema and pop culture as well as Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (remember Amanda Plummer's Yolanda AKA Honey Bunny?) and nods to their own shows like Farzi and The Family Man sprinkled for the fans to relish -- from the music and the hairstyles, to namedropping Sridevi and a tape of the 1989 pulpy Bollywood action film Gair Kanooni ft. Indian superstars Govinda and Rajinikanth. It definitely is the better entry in the franchise. But does it do enough to uplift it?
When you look at it as a standalone, Citadel: Honey Bunny is enjoyable, bingeable, with some great action, and decent performances from Varun Dhawan and Samantha Ruth Prabhu. I actually had a good time. But it remains strictly ordinary, and a lesser work from the house of Raj & DK. The series is swimming in potential because of its premise and fascinating character study opportunities, yet, it simply floats, and doesn't dive deep.
One of my first disappointments was the titular relationship between Honey and Bunny, which didn't make me feel much. Individually, Dhawan and Samantha as Honey and Bunny are effective. But together... There was more chemistry between Dhawan and his found family, or Samantha and a gun, because oh boy, did she hit those action scenes out of the park with the way she moves! We needed their love story to be a powerful emotional anchor, something strong to justify all the betrayals, heartbreaks, and reunions, but it never came through. I instantly missed the sexy chemistry that Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden stirred up in Citadel, because at least Kane's pain of their separation felt earned.
The way Rahi and Honey go from being friends to falling in love to a secret third thing is so devoid of passion, they might as well have been just coworkers-turned-accidental parents. The transition to their kiss and romantic entanglement is so laughingly sudden, that I can only compare it to another ineffective transition in the series where the clandestine world of espionage agencies that were initially unnamed, suddenly become known by their official names. The reason it even registers is not because it's some grand suspense reveal, but simply because it is done so nonchalantly that the intended effect, of making us question who the real bad guy is, is not delivered well.
There's a certain coldness to Honey Bunny that seeps into its every aspect. It's quite devoid of colour, playing in stony greys for the most part, a surprising choice for an Indian outing, especially when the American one looked so stylish and warm. Even the way its characters interact with each other feels subdued, considering these are 80s kids, and ought to have drama in their blood. This in turn keeps you, the audience, from investing in them. There's entertaining banter between the foster brothers/agents Rahi, Chako, and Ludo, and their camaraderie is decently warm, but not strong enough to evoke a passionate response from you if, say, Rahi were to lose one of them.
Samantha's Honey is even more clinical. A woman shaped by harsh circumstances, she's had to live her life in a constant survival mode so it makes sense. Her scenes with the young and precocious Nadia, played well by the young Kashvi Majmundar, when they are in 'Play' mode and fending off bad guys, work. In action sequences, this detached Samantha is even more impressive. But for the rest of it, she feels too stony. I get it; these are agents; but even in James Bond's coldest moments, and harshest of lines to Vesper, you could feel the deeper devastation underneath it. Here, the hard exterior is too impermeable to see what's going on in the character's mind.
The more passion-infused of the performances came from Kay Kay Menon, who easily slips into the role of Vishwa, a complicated, emotionally manipulative father figure that takes more than he gives. I still felt Vishwa had the potential to be edgier and more layered. There's also Saqib Saleem, efficient as the indoctrinated agent with a one-track agenda, Kedar AKA KD. But other characters, like Sikander Kher's Shaan and Simran Bagga's Zooni feel almost cardboard-like, given neither dimension nor decent enough bits to establish themselves.
But perhaps my biggest gripe with Citadel as a franchise is the organisation at its core itself, which lacks character and, frankly, charisma. Despite all the hoopla they make about the role they play, the stakes, whether personal or in its world of secret organisations and espionage that would either save or destroy the world, never feel intense enough to move you, thrill you, or bring you to the edge of your seat with concern for its characters or the implications on a world where such unchecked power is in the hands of a few.
As an audience, I was compelled to question: Is Citadel really that big a deal? Who is funding these organisations? How do they work? What are its chains of command? Why is it so easy to turn so many agents? Clearly, it's rarely money or power, and often a strong emotional motivation, like love, or family, or blind loyalty to a cause. But then again, if you don't establish those emotional relationships well, how would you get the viewers to invest in them and root for a character through their rights or wrongs?
Honey Bunny comes close to getting the personal stakes right. It was interesting to see the circumstances that shaped Nadia Sinh in her childhood to become one of Citadel's best agents in the future. But there was so much more to explore with Rahi and Honey as individual characters, their doomed-by-narrative relationship, and the core fight that Citadel, which itself is a grey character that's not always on the right side, is engaged in, that slipped away like missed opportunities.
Citadel: Honey Bunny is definitely a course-correcting step for this franchise. It's not quite blowing our minds yet or turning the streaming space cluttered with better offerings upside down, for the budget and scale that it is mounted on. Even if its final shots use that cool camera turning upside-down angle which I still haven't quite understood the purpose for. But I would like to give a second round of seasons the chance to change my mind.