Star Cast: John Abraham, Manushi Chhillar, Hadi Khanjanpour, Madhurima Tuli
Tehran Movie Review Synopsis:
TEHRAN is the story of a Special Cell officer’s quest for revenge. The story is based in 2012. Iran and Israel are at loggerheads and carrying out operations against each other. In response to Israel’s action, Iran kills Israeli nuclear scientists in Georgia and Bangkok. But things heat up in India when an Israeli diplomat is killed in Delhi in his car through a bomb blast. A poor little girl selling flowers gets killed in collateral damage. Afshar Hosseini (Hadi Khanjanpour) is the man responsible for the attack. Special Cell officer Rajeev Kumar aka RK (John Abraham) takes over the case. There is pressure on him to hand over the case to RA&W since it’s an international matter. However, Rajiv won’t let that happen since the attack happened on Indian soil and, more importantly, an Indian kid got killed for no fault of hers, which affects him. In fact, Rajeev decides to go all the way to Iran, with his junior Divya Rana (Manushi Chhillar) and another officer, to eliminate Afshar Hosseini against the orders of his own department.
Tehran Movie Story Review:
Bindi Karia’s story is inspired from a real event of 2012. The story is interesting enough to gain your attention. Bindni Karia and Ashish Prakash Verma’s screenplay is fast-paced and it keeps you glued during majority of the film’s duration. Bindni Karia and Ritesh Shah’s dialogues are conversational and realistic.
Arun Gopalan’s direction goes with the realistic nature of the film. However, it fails in establishing an important point in the narrative. Rajeev doesn’t appear affected enough by the girl’s death. Hence, it becomes difficult to digest when he takes the major step of taking a dangerous journey all the way to Iran to kill Afshar Hosseini. Also, a lot of things happen conveniently for the protagonist. For example, he easily finds people to risk their lives to help him in his mission in different countries.
Although the finale is routine, the texts that appear in the end brings in some appeal.
Tehran | Official Trailer | John Abraham, Manushi Chhillar, Neeru Bajwa | Premieres 14th Aug 2025
Tehran Movie Review Performances:
This is a tailor-made role for John Abraham. He excels in action scenes, which is expected from him. But his performance falls in the average range when it comes to emoting. Hadi Khanjanpour excels as Afshar Hosseini. He is the best performer from the lot. Manushi Chhillar is wasted. She has limited screen time and, more surprisingly, hardly any dialogues. Alyy Khan comes up with a good performance as a RA&W officer. Neeru Bajwa as Rajeev’s colleague Sheilaja is decent. Madhirima Tuli, who plays Rajeev’s wife, is hardly there.
Tehran Music and other technical aspects:
The film has only one song ‘Hasraton Ke Baazar’, which is composed by Dhruv Ghanekar. It is ordinary and not memorable. Ketan Sodha’s background score succeeds in generating the effect in various sequences.
Ievgen Gubrenko and Andre Menezes’ cinematography falls in the positive category. Doug Coleman and Amritpal Singh’s action is raw, brutal and more in the realistic zone. It falls more in the international category. Meghna Gandhi’s production design is first rate as it makes various locations in India and outside believable. Ayesha Dasgupta’s costumes are straight out of reality. Visual effects by Redefine are impressive. Akshara Prabhakar’s editing is sleek.
Tehran Movie Review Conclusion:
On the whole, TEHRAN is a decent espionage drama that could have been more. The film scores more in the technical arena. It should find its audience amongst those who prefer realistic action dramas instead of the masala fare.