Katyal is made believable because Akshay Kumar junks faux heroics for an unshowy heroism, which comes from a place of initial reluctance, seguing into a slow acceptance of the situation, and the gradual taking charge because there is no one else that can do the job.
It is August, 1990. Kuwait-based Indian businessman Ranjit Katyal( Akshay Kumar) is awoken rudely from slumber by the news that Iraqi forces have attacked the city. It is the sort of awakening that shakes loose Katyal from his cocooned wealthy life, which he shares with his wife Amrita( Nimrat Kaur) and young daughter, forcing him to deal with a series of dangerous situations, and leading to the evacuation of more than a lakh Indians stuck between Saddam Hussain’s brutal forces and an alarmingly slow-to-take-heed Indian stat
The film is based on the real-life conflict and bloodshed that took place twenty five years back in Kuwait, and the way it is done—with a sense of urgency and immediacy, bringing alive a city over-run and under siege—sends out a crucial message to star-driven-yet-drivel-producing Bollywood. That given the backing of an A-list star, anything is possible: well done, Akshay Kumar, for donning the producer-with-conviction hat to create a crackling film.
And another pat for the performance. Katyal is made believable because Akshay junks faux heroics for an unshowy heroism, which comes from a place of initial reluctance, seguing into a slow acceptance of the situation, and the gradual taking charge because there is no one else that can do the job. And brings his star power to lift the film, in much the same way Ben Affleck buoyed the Hollywood evac
This is a deftly done film, which does slide a little in the second half, but never abandons its mission: to tell a tale. Akshay Kumar leads from the front, but shares space when it is needed: Nimrat Kaur, in her second Hindi film after ‘The Lunchbox’, keeps pace with her co-star; Inaamulhaq( so enjoyable in ‘Filmistaan’), as Saddam’s man-in-Kuwait, is suitably menacing, Belawadi as the annoying refugee really does make you want to slap him, Kohli is kohl-eyed and restrained and makes us feel for him, Mishra as the Dilli babu, disinterested at first, then taking charge, fits right in
Bollywood doesn’t do well with basing its films on real-life events because it mostly has no idea how to straddle the line between fact and fiction, which is so crucial to the genre. It overdoes things, and turns them into melodrama and schmaltz. ‘Airlift’ plays it right, and gives us drama, even if things slow down and turn a trifle repetitious post interval.
Akshay Kumar is overwhelmed with the response to his latest film Airlift, which revolves around the evacuation of Indians from Kuwait during the 1990 Iraq-Kuwait war. The actor said that such type of films come almost once in an actor’s lifetime.
Akshay has been busy on Wednesday, thanking his well-wishers on Twitter. He wrote: My Twitter feed has been flooded with #Airlift, so much positivity and love.I couldn’t have asked for more and for sure wasn’t expecting this much hence feeling very overwhelmed.
Akshay added: While most of you have written I should do more films like Airlift.I wish I could but honestly films like these come very rarely, almost once in an actor’s lifetime and I am extremely fortunate to be a part of it. Thank you all for everything. Love and prayers always.
Directed by Raja Krishna Menon, Airlift, which also stars The Lunchbox actress Nimrat Kaur, tells how the Indian government evacuated 1, 70, 000 people of Indian origin and also of other nationalities through 488 flights during the Iraq-Kuwait war.
The problem with most mainstream Hindi films is that they don’t care.
They don’t care about anything other than the egos of their stars, and the box office collections they generate. They don’t care about the story, aesthetics, performances, and, most importantly, the side actors, who are merely present in the film to make the heroes look heroic.
It is this lack of empathy - a kind of arrogance that usually comes with an inordinate amount of money at stake - that makes Hindi mainstream cinema mediocre, almost inhuman. So whenAirlift, the latest Akshay Kumar release, accords a peripheral character, the star’s driver in the movie, significance and dignity, you are pleasantly surprised - a sign that this star vehicle may not be inane and heartless.
In one of the earlier scenes in the film, set in 1990’s Kuwait, Ranjit Katyal( Kumar), an influential businessman, gets inside his car, and his driver switches on the stereo that plays a Hindi film song, Ek Do Teen.
Ranjit, who considers himself more Kuwaiti than Indian, scoffs at the choice of song and tells his chauffeur to play a different track, presumably something non-Hindi.
A few hours later, in the same night, while Ranjit’s in the car with his wife, Amita( Nimrat Kaur), the driver tells them that he’s planning to visit India with his family, which includes his daughter who has never seen the country. Ranjit remains comically dismissive but Amita tells him to keep quiet. The film lets the driver have this moment.
Ranjit can’t care less about India and Indians, but a few days later, when his driver gets shot, on the first morning of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, something stirs in him. He sees the sorrows and anxieties of his own countrymen, especially ones less privileged than him, and begins doing his bit to set their lives right( even at the cost of complicating his own life) .
Most commercial films would have used this plot point to launch into a narrative centered on the larger-than-life persona of its hero. But Airlift doesn’t. Because it knows what’s far more important in a story based on a real-life event: faceless, nameless ordinary people totaling to more than a lakh and a half, who are stranded between the cowardice and indifference of their adoptive and native countries.
But before Ranjit takes up the cause of thousands of strangers, he starts with his own people first. As he stands outside the house of his driver to inform his wife about her husband’s death, he can barely speak a word. And even after this scene, Ranjit, and, consequently, this film, doesn’t discard her, or her daughter; he brings them to his office, now a makeshift shelter for many Indians in Kuwait, and assures them of their safety.
When Ranjit goes to strike a deal with his the Major of Iraqi Republican Army, he agrees to pay for the safety of not three people( his family) but five( his driver’s wife and her daughter) . Airlift doesn’t demarcate between human lives. It’s an important scene because mainstream Hindi films are not known for their moral fiber, definitely not in a way that’s this unassuming and simple.
Which is why Ranjit’s transformation, one that’s absolutely central to this film, doesn’t ring false. And it’s heartening that Raja Menon, Airlift’s director, believes it’s important that Ranjit first earns our trust - through small moments like these - before becoming a messiah for others.
For a film like Airlift, based on the lives of a few men who felt doing the right thing was vital, it is important that the film itself is humane, finding hope and humour in squalor. Kumar’s Ranjit is indeed a hero, but the film doesn’t necessarily see him as one, merely as someone who was able to find moral courage through a deeply personal loss.
Airlift also often sweats the small stuff, and does it remarkably well. The film is not just about Indians in Kuwait, but also Kuwaitis in Kuwait. When the Iraqi army attacks Kuwait in the night, we see a man, presumably a Kuwaiti, come out to the balcony of his house, dressed in pajamas, devastated by what’s being done to his country.
When Ranjit’s in his car driving through the city that has been destroyed by the Iraqi army, we see, in a fleeting shot, Kuwaitis being harassed in the streets - these scenes are not particularly essential to this story, but it was to that moment in time where Airlift derives inspiration from. When the Iraqi soldiers plunder Ranjit’s house, they are at first struck by its opulence.
There are desires aplenty in Airlift - some sincere, some malevolent - that keep bringing you closer to this film. Even the new, bigger makeshift shelter, a local school, doesn’t merely consist of refugees, but people who have their own stories: Ibrahim( Purab Kohli), a newly married man searching for his wife; Deepti( Lena), a house help protecting her Kuwaiti employer; George( Prakash Belawadi), a middle-aged man who’s so easily irritable that he’s almost endearing. Even the office of Ministry of External Affairs, characterized by tall stack of files and listless officers, is a character of its own.
So when a film like Airlift, which has so much going for it, flounders, it both upsets and irritates you. What’s even more frustrating, Airlift’s shortcoming is not different or courageous; it’s brought upon by something that’s plagued Hindi mainstream films for decades: shoehorning songs.
Airlift’s songs neither take the story forward nor build mood; in fact, they seem like checklists Menon had to tick to get his film funded. Although it’s to his credit that he keeps them short, their very presence, no matter for how brief a duration, is enough to yank you out of the story - a pity because Menon does know what makes his film affecting.