Good move Airlift is Argo with a split personality, songs and questionable fidelity to facts.
Raja Krishna Menon’s film is loosely based on the true story of how Indians were evacuated from Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion in 1990. When the going is good, the film is very good, but it is intermittently confusing, as though two directors made it: the first one understood that this subject required realistic treatment slightly removed from the conventional Bollywood film; the second entered the picture after it was completed and spoilt the tone in places by adding loud songs, needlessly heightened the pitch of the romance between the hero and his wife, and ended with a splash of stretched-out, flag-waving patriotism.
These add-ons qualitatively diminish an otherwise well-handled film that is unusual on the Bollywood firmament, the sort rarely headlined by a star of Akshay Kumar’s stature in this industry. Our hypothetical Director 2 should have respected the audience’s intellect a little more.