I had a lot of hopes and expectations in mind when I bought a ticket for LOC. Sadly though, all I managed to do was lose 120 bucks without a justification to why I did.
J.P Dutta manages to catch the war in all it’s spirit but falters when I t comes to acting and direction.
The first mentionable blooper is that the movie seems to be a hell lot of stars and their love stories caught in a gigantic roller-coaster that doesn’t have brakes. The movie starts on an extremely long note of sad partings. As the camera zooms onto each star, the movie passes into a period of recollection. It wouldn’t have been so tortous if the recollections hadn’t streched on to a seemingly infinite limit. And when your eyes are finally adapting to the unending stream of bollywood babes(wearing all their clothes for the first time), the director jolts you back into the war.
One by one, the top brass deployes everyone into war. It’s funny when Saif’s patrol catches one of the pakis taking a leak and follows him to a mortar base which they manage to purge of all the baddies( almost everyone is taken down by bayonet charge), but not before on of them pops a grenade and takes down a couple of soldiers.
The movie is filled with funny quips, most of them sponsored by the two Yadavs played by Manoj Bajpai and Ashutosh Rana. However, the movie clearly is made to cash on the indian jingoism. The director seems to assume that the pakistanis are not only fools but blind as well, when Ajay Devgan manages to sneak in on them from behind in a manner which makes you think how thick he can get.
The movie clearly assumes that most people wouldn’t notice technical flaws. At one point of time, it contains some footage of aircraft taking off for a strike mission carrying, hang on for this, drop tanks which don’t have anything else in them but fuel.
The Bofors, however, have never been projected in such grandeur and I must admit that the the footage showing those guns and the Pinaka multi barrel rocket launchers were amazing. This also must be the first movie which shows an all-indian weapon, the 7.62 mm INSAS rifle.
If you’re looking for lots of action and guns without caring for the story, this is the movie for you. It would have been a bit better if it hadn’t been so long.