MR-9: Do or Die

I have doubt that the director ever read any Masud Rana. Absolutely disappointed. The story was weak. Poor casting. ABM Sumon does not look like Masud Rana that was portrayed by Kazi Anwar Hossein.

I have doubt that the director ever read any Masud Rana. Absolutely disappointed. The story was weak. Poor casting. ABM Sumon does not look like Masud Rana that was portrayed by Kazi Anwar Hossein.

I have doubt that the director ever read any Masud Rana. Absolutely disappointed. The story was weak. Poor casting. ABM Sumon does not look like Masud Rana that was portrayed by Kazi Anwar Hossein.

Absolutely disappointed.

First of all, as a movie adapted from a novel, it didn't work well because of poor casting at the leading role Masud Rana. He doesn't look like the character as well as he doesn't act like him at all. ABM Sumon (MR 9) acts like an expressionless android. Besides that, the storyline is not so engaging and the direction is very poor. I am not sure if it is the first movie of the director Asif Akbor or not. The visuals are not so good as well specially the part where blood was spitting out after taking a shot. It felt like the blood was vapor out in the air. Finally, the main torture was the horrible sound design. It felt like a real torture with too much loud sound and illogical sound placement. Overall, the movie was below average with poor direction, artificial acting and intolerable sound mixing.

This is one of the worst movies I have ever watched. Right from the storyline to action sequences, from acting to cinematography, there is not a single aspect of this movie that had anything positive about it. Most action set pieces looked like they have picked some random people with big bodies from street, handed them some fake firearms and asked them to play tag. The production value is extremely poor and resembles that of the Kanti Shah movies. Let alone the Bollywood spy movies of the Jitendra era, this could not even match the semi B-grade spy movies of Mithun.

If only stuck to the original storyline this could have been a much more compelling movie. Kabir Khan, was an iconic villain in the Masud Rana universe. They reduced him to a caricature at best.

Please save yourself from headache and avoid watching this movie.

The director, storywriter, and others involved probably never read any Masud Rana books before. Masud Rana doesn't resemble the character, and he doesn't act like him at all in this film. He didn't even look like a secret agent; instead, he came across as a trainee, a secondary character, and a weak, unintelligent, and immature one.

The special effects and CGI are worse than what you'd find in average budget social media content. Everything went horribly wrong in this movie. Not every idea deserves to be turned into a film, and this one is a prime example of that. It's a disheartening disappointment for fans and cinema enthusiasts alike.

Of course I opted to sit down and watch "MR-9: Do or Die", as I happened to stumble upon it by random luck here in 2024. It was an action thriller with Frank Grillo and Michael Jai White on the cast list, so of course I sat down to watch it. Sure, I had never heard about the movie before, but that hardly mattered.

The storyline in "MR-9: Do or Die" wasn't exactly interesting or captivating. And it was a constant struggle to maintain interest in the movie, because it made very little sense, and there just wasn't anything overly enjoyable happening throughout the course of the mundane and long 106 minutes that the movie trotted on for.

It was rather impressive that a collective three writers could manage to conjure up something this weak and disappointing. Writers Asif Akbar, Nazim Ud Daula and Abdul Aziz delivered something that felt like something that would happen if you ordered James Bond from Wish.

The acting performances in the movie were, for the most part, rather rigid and devoid of life and emotion, and that made sitting through the movie all the more painful. And I have to say that this movie was definitely not the finest moments in the careers of Frank Grillo and Michael Jai White, the only two familiar faces on the cast list. Grillo and White were like fish out of water in this movie. Leading actor Abm Sumon, playing MR-9 Masud Rana, was not a particularly good actor, and that sort of shunted the movie.

The music in the movie was so over-dramatic that is quickly became a nuisance to listen to. And I really wish that I had the option to turn off the music, because it was seriously ruining the movie.

The blood effects from the gunshots was just laughably bad to look at. No one buys into those God awful sprays of red CGI mist as being blood from gunshot wounds. It just looking atrocious and gave a low budget and amateurish atmosphere to the movie.

"MR-9: Do or Die" is definitely not a movie that I would recommend you waste 106 minutes of your life on watching. Some of us suffered through it and took one for the team, so you don't have to; you're quite welcome. Nor is it a movie that will ever find its way back to my screen a second time, as it was difficult enough to sit through it the first time.

My rating of director Asif Akbar's 2023 action thriller "MR-9: Do or Die" lands on a very, very generous three out of ten stars.