Akshay Kumar is the businessman leading an expat exodus to flee Iraqi invaders – but the aggressors are reduced to cartoon villains in this turgid saga Indian and Iraqi delegations enjoyed cordial relations, which made the airlift easier to facilitate.
Menon pulls some of it off: he reproduces that dusty look now de rigueur for Middle East movies, repositions his extras efficiently, and finally allows the Indian flag to be raised again.
Yet the warm wads of dramatic dung tossed into this sandstorm prove wholly resistible. Airlift transports its characters the 2, 500 miles back to their promised land, as history demands, but I wouldn’t trust its underlying nationalism as far as I could throw it.