Bangladesh’s top secret agent, Masud Rana aka MR-9 (ABM Sumon), tangles with corrupt American businessman Roman Ross (Frank Grillo) in this, intended as the first in a series of espionage thrillers, based on the bestselling novels of Qazi Anwar Hussain.
Masud Rana, a cult hero in Bangladesh, is heavily promoted in MR-9: Do or Die‘s marketing materials as the Desi James Bond, but it’s not as if we wouldn’t be able to tell, so closely is the James Bond formula followed: we get a briefing at Bangladeshi Counter-Intelligence’s HQ from the Desi M, then our Desi James Bond is given his gadgets by the Desi Q before he sets off on a series of action-adventure setpieces particularly inspired by the style of Daniel Craig’s run as Bond. There’s the pulsating score, flashy editing, lush but yellowish cinematography and copious amounts of running and jumping, though MR-9: DoD‘s unabashed escapism owes more to the Brosnan Bonds, the tongue-in-cheek Kingsman or the cheerily meaningless Mission: Impossible franchise, with Rana’s gadgets including a miniature robotic insect that flies around and shoots lasers to get him out of tight spots.
Even the hideously clunky title, MR-9: Do or Die seems designed to evoke the No Time to Live and Let Die Another Days of this world. All of this is no coincidence, for the Masud Rana character has been a conscious answer to James Bond ever since his creation in 1966, thirteen years after the literary début of Ian Fleming’s super-spy and at the height of the Bondmania epidemic created by Sean Connery’s cinematic outings as Bond. Masud Rana has gone on to appear in a number of novels so great that Wikipedia can’t even give a non-confusing answer as to precisely how many there are. It’s definitely in the 300+ range, however.
If you’re wondering how any series could possibly run to that many books, the answer is, apparently, plagiarism, with Qazi Anwar Hussain and his publishers frequently resorting to simply translating popular English-language thrillers and dropping the Masud Rana character into the shoes of the main character. Fleming’s James Bond adventures are not alone in being Find+Replaced into Masud Rana adventures; other candidates have included Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt, Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon, Matthew Reilly’s Shane “Scarecrow” Schofield, and other spy and adventure types from Frederick Forsyth, Alistair MacLean, Peter Benchley, and any other author to write a successful English-language thriller novel between the 1950s and now. Even the movies aren’t safe, with big-screen installments of Bond, Indiana Jones, John McClane and John Rambo being just as ripe for the taking.
This might be expedient when cranking out instalments of pulp literature, but it adds up to a film without much of a sense of identity, a pale imitation of Bond and a handful of other spy/action franchises. The film looks cheap and slapdash, and not in a charming way. Our heroes, on account of being good guys, are regularly able to defeat men twice their size with only a few halfhearted rabbit punches and kitten slaps. Indeed, all stunt sequences look more like run-throughs than the finished thing. The excitement of Casino Royale‘s parkour chase translates into some winded-looking jogging and instead of an Aston Martin or Lotus we get the sort of thing a Star in a Reasonably Priced Car might drive.
And cypher that he is, Rana doesn’t even manage the bland likeability of Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, let alone the swagger of Sean Connery, the loving wink of Roger Moore or the cynical world-weariness of Daniel Craig – he simply comes off as arrogant, and outright rude at times. But we do get one Hell of a smarmy villain in Frank Grillo, veteran of a dozen Netflix quickie action flicks, and better yet, Anisur Rahman Milon, an actor of standing in his native Bangladesh, is the film’s real treasure as the wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing Kabir Chowdhury.
MR-9: DoD would dearly like to be the first instalment in a series of significance, but it’s not even a sure thing that the three-film contract to which Do or Die owes its existence will ever be fulfilled. A surprisingly hefty chunk of the back end of MR-9: DoD is devoted to setting up a sequel in which MR-9 must work with Chinese intelligence, and this blatant pandering to the PRC’s huge and largely undiscerning market seems, at least, like a safer bet than trying to pass this product off as a rival to the James Bonds and Mission: Impossibles of this world.