Citadel: Honey Bunny

Is there something called an overdose of spyverse? If there is, I am one of the first victims of it. Too many spyverses are in play in pop culture and quite honestly none offer anything new. In Prime Video’s latest series Citadel: Honey Bunny – an Indian prequel to Russo Brothers’ Citadel featuring Priyanka Chopra – the action sequences are in plenty and almost relentless yet seem repetitive. Raj & DK have spoiled us with The Family Man, a sharp series where wit and action were quick on their heels. In Citadel: Honey Bunny – the lead pair Samantha Ruth Prabhu and Varun Dhawan give their all to the action sequences and perform some awe-inspiring stunts, yet the series lacks the thrills. Mostly.

First things first: all hail the arrival of Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Indian cinema’s first real female action star who demands our attention from the get-go and never loses it through the six part series, Citadel: Honey Bunny. She’s coiled, ready for action, exploding off the screen whenever the script demands it of her, and the demand stays consistently high. As the family woman-cum-spry spy, who will do anything to protect her daughter, Samantha’s Honey is the best part of this enterprise, directed and written by Raj and DK (Sita Menon also gets writing and directing credit), and executive produced by the Russo Bros.

Citadel: Honey Bunny is a catchy title. In fact, you can almost hear it. “Honey Bunny” instantly evokes the viral Idea Cellular ad jingle from 2012: you’re my pumpkin pumpkin/hello honey bunny. But there’s more to the earworm than a Pulp Fiction tribute or a term of endearment. The commercial itself showed a traveler infecting different parts of the country with a tune; the cutesy lyrics, too, felt like the collective sound of couples staying connected across regions. It’s not a stretch to suggest that Citadel: Honey Bunny — whose pan-world premise features a pan-Indian adventure of a couple named Honey (Samantha Ruth Prabhu) and Bunny (Varun Dhawan) — is a long-form descendent of the jingle. It’s totally on brand for director duo Raj & DK, who thrive on affectionate pop-cultural nods, cinephilia and retro references.

A man, holding a gun, chases a woman through the nooks and crannies of Belgrade. Finding himself in a cul-de-sac of sorts, he sees her pointing a gun back at him. “Put your gun down,” she barks at him. He, a seasoned special agent, lets go of his gun and promptly gets shot. The law of probability points to the fact that if he had held on to the gun, there would be a 50 per cent chance of him being shot and a 50 per cent chance of him being able to shoot the woman in front of him. When he drops the gun, for no explainable reason, he makes that probability convert to a 100 per cent chance against him.