Why Agent Vinod remains Sriram Raghavan’s most fascinating failure | Opinion-entertainment News
6 min readMumbaiJun 22, 2026 09:49 AM IST Manmohan Desai, Mahendra Sandhu, Godard, Prem Chopra, Iftekhar, Tarantino, Danny, Vijay Anand, Ajit, Hitchcock, Shahbaz Khan, Michael Bay, Sergio Leone, Prem Chopra, and an explosive four-minute-long take over Pritam’s Raabta. What’s not to love? Your mind would make you want to think of James Bond’s Dr. No, but somewhere along the way, you’re convinced that Sriram Raghavan is equally enthralled by Jeetendra’s 1967 spy actioner Farz. Similarly, your mind would make you want to think that Raghavan’s busy plot doesn’t have any time for serious song picturisation, but then, somewhere along the way, you see a mujra-in-the-villain’s-den thrown into the mix. The constant feeling that you get is that Agent Vinod is stranded between two traditions, making you strand yourself between the heart and the mind. But if you watch closely enough, and repeatedly, just like I have, in all these years, you would perhaps realise that Raghavan just wants to have some fun with the genre. Is that too much to ask for? Well, surely for …
