‘Citadel: Honey Bunny’ Review: A Scintillating Mix of Action and Romance, Bollywood and Hollywood

For nan past period and change, I’ve been surviving pinch a secret. Like a typical agent, I was sent overseas connected duty and I discovered thing monumental. I didn’t retrieve nan plans for a limb of wide destruction, but I did preview nan first overseas installments successful Prime Video‘s Citadel franchise. What I discovered was that nan preposterously-named Citadel: Honey Bunny freaking rules. In fact, nan India-based spy thriller is 1 of my favourite shows of nan full damn year.

Citadel: Honey Bunny is nan 3rd installment successful Prime Video’s eager world spy franchise, Citadel. The original Citadel premiered successful Spring 2023 and introduced Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas arsenic ace spies who find themselves struck by amnesia. As nan bid went on, its slick group up recovered itself undone by progressively silly crippled twists. Last month, nan Milan-based Citadel: Diana, debuted, proving location was still immoderate life successful nan Russo Brothers-produced franchise. Citadel: Diana was mature, moody, and buoyed by starring woman Matilda De Angelis’s beguiling performance. However, it’s Citadel: Honey Bunny that manages to yet people Prime Video its first imaginative location tally successful nan Citadel universe.

Photo: Prime Video

Citadel: Honey Bunny was created by Indian tv powerhouses Raj & DK and their long-time penning partner Sita R. Menon. The bid pivots betwixt 2 cardinal timelines, 1 successful 2000 and nan different successful 1992. This allows Citadel: Honey Bunny to clasp nan unsmooth and tumble, lo-fi action of films for illustration 2002’s The Bourne Identity while staying wrong nan different hyper-stylized and tech-heavy Citadel universe. This mounting besides lets Citadel: Honey Bunny research really evil spy web Manticore emerged connected Citadel’s watch…by telling nan communicative of really nan parents of Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s Nadia Sinh fell successful love.

We first meet nan pint-sized Nadia (Kashvi Majmundar) nodding dormant connected a motorbike arsenic her mother Honey (Samantha) takes her to schoolhouse successful nan gorgeous Himalayan edifice municipality of Nainital successful 2000. From nan jump, Citadel: Honey Bunny establishes nan azygous mother’s narration pinch her precocious kid arsenic loving, but strange. (Lorelei Gilmore wasn’t precisely telling Rory to make judge she threw nan first punch successful immoderate fight, if you drawback my drift.) Soon, though, arsenic Honey finds herself nan target of “bad men” who wish to kidnap some her and Nadia, we recognize why nan retired supplier has raised her girl to deliberation for illustration a spy. Mother and cub are soon connected nan run, but they person thief connected nan way.

Photo: Prime Video

Back successful 1992 Bombay — nan show correctly calls nan aforesaid metropolis Mumbai successful its 2000 scenes — we meet Bunny (Varun Dhawan). He’s a talented, good-hearted stuntman and 1 of nan fewer agleam spots successful then-struggling character Honey’s life. When Honey finds herself homeless, she accepts a unsocial broadside occupation from her friend. Bunny and his pals request Honey to beryllium a literal chromatic trap, luring an important businessman distant from his plush edifice room for a half hr truthful they tin infiltrate it to retrieve a disc. Honey not only excels astatine nan work, but seems to bask it, going truthful acold arsenic to unpaid to supplier their people to bargain nan disc herself. When nan cognition goes awry, Bunny has to prevention her, revealing nan stuntman arsenic an incredibly deadly combatant and existent concealed agent.

What makes Citadel: Honey Bunny truthful intoxicating is really it not only cheekily flits betwixt nan trademark tropes of eastbound and westbound action pictures, but besides genres themselves. Trailers for Citadel: Honey Bunny intelligibly stress nan show’s unrelenting action sequences, but my absolute favourite portion of nan show was nan romance. The chemistry betwixt Samantha and Varun Dhawan is vibrating connected a atomic level. The series successful Episode 2 that sets up their first buss is truthful slyly seductive that I’ve officially gone backmost and rewatched complete and complete again, for illustration it’s nan carriage segment from Bridgerton Season 3 aliases something. It’s conscionable 1 of galore moments successful which Citadel: Honey Bunny improbably fires connected each cylinders. Whether it’s action, intrigue, humor, aliases heartache, this show nails it all.

Photo: Prime Video

If I person nitpicks astir nan series, they are fewer and easy to overlook. Citadel: Honey Bunny leans heavy into nan omnipresent orangish and bluish lighting schemes that look to blight modern prestige tv (and canine Decider’s resident recapper Sean T. Collins to nary end!). However, fixed nan show’s play portion aesthetic, I tin woody pinch it arsenic a “throwback” vibe. While astir of nan characters are incredibly analyzable and vividly rendered, precious small clip is fixed successful processing important broadside characters. Finally, Citadel: Honey Bunny ends connected a massively abrupt cliffhanger. Similar to House of nan Dragon Season 2, it sets nan shape for an epic conflict only to trim to black.

All of which is to opportunity that I’m upset that Citadel: Honey Bunny near maine wanting more. More leader shots of Varun Dhawan looking for illustration an existent warrior deity astir to strike, much moments of Samantha being a chromatic acold motherfucker of a mother, and overmuch much clip pinch Honey, Bunny, and small Nadia. Citadel: Honey Bunny is simply a hellhole of an entertaining thrust that you should not overlook.

All six episodes of Citadel: Honey Bunny premiere connected Prime Video connected Thursday, November 7.