Kargil war cost a lot to the Indian soldiers; a misadventure by Pakistan only lead to a dreaded war, with each side suffering good number of casualties. Years later, we are not seeing a flurry of films based on the events of and after Kargil war – undoubtedly, LOC-Kargil was the biggest bet of the lot since the movie set to explore the various simultaneous fights against the infiltrators. J. P. Dutta is a hyped film maker who has always thrown in his dose of melodrama and commercial values in his movies based on authentic subjects. While Border was a bad movie, Refugee was worse. LOC-Kargil is his third venture at war films and stands at a whopping running length of 4 hours, completely capable of draining you out.
To make a movie on real life incidents and based on lives of real people is always difficult. A director always has to manage to get the emotions and correctness of the character right. While LOC is huge in its scale and scope, it falls awfully short of correctness of characters, thus underlying the respectability the real characters themselves richly deserve.
LOC – Kargil
First let me begin with the cons of the movie. The first and the biggest complaint I had after watching this movie was the characterization of the real actors. For instance, while captain Nayyar’s portrayal is completely different in Dhoop [in fact his most important call to his father a day before he was killed is completely ignored in this movie] and LOC – Kargil. We are never told that Captain Nayyar was promoted in his post to lead a section of the war; that you will never know it unless you see Dhoop is the real issue of concern.
Yes, I got to know more of wailing heroines and family melodramas in abundance though. In getting his characters to sing in the second half of the movie, even making his characters sing a ridiculous song like Khat likhna hi hoga piya, J. P. Dutta effectively dilutes the characters of the movie to mere reel personas. Instead when we as an audience should be empathizing with their emotional dilemmas during the final days of war, the audience and you feel more like taking a break to the loo to avoid the hammering songs. I wish J. P. Dutta was a little more responsible in his characterization – after all, they were the individuals who laid down their lives for a cause; to mortify them to satisfy actor / actress egos or commercial values is a real sin, and I cannot really pardon J.P. Dutta for irresponsibly handling his characters (when in fact he has claimed that he has done more than 2 years of research on this movie).
The second compliant I had with this movie was the war itself – agreed it was cinematic experience to watch a war with real stuff being used in the movie; agreed it was kind of thrilling to know how our jawans handled the war and the enemies; agreed it was very well done in the movie. However, whom were the jawans shooting at? Whom were they killing? At the very outset of the movie we are told (and we also know) that there were around 2000 to 3000 infiltrators who were in the war and yet, all you manage to see in the movie are just a handful of them running around only when our soldiers manager to capture a post.
Why, I could literally count the number of Pakistanis / Infiltrators in the movie – certain characters and scenes are literally repeated from different angles (like Pakistanis throwing mortar shells). That loses the credibility of war itself – Without the enemy ever being shown in its prowess, how did J. P. Dutta think he could convince that war was taking place? For all I know the whole war could have been done in just mountain in different getups; there is no different in Tololing point, nor is there a different scene at Tiger Hill. Somehow, beyond a point, the war sequences fail to arouse the kind of empathy they deserve. While the movie begins brilliantly pulling a chug in your heart, towards the end the same war just happens to go and on and on.
Thirdly, I have never quite understood why was the movie made for four hours? The subject did not demand such an expansive length with each character reminiscing about his / her past again and again. The director could have taken inspiration from The Thin Red Line where too each character reminisces about his life, but done more subtly and more sparingly. Instead, here in the movie when one character starts remembering his past, you are quite sure that the next 6 to 7 characters are going to do the same. Excessive songs, excessive family angles and excessive woman weeping were simply unneeded for such a subject – A soldier’s emotions can be expressed without the need of actually showing a deluge on screen.
Fourthly, this movie in reality was first titled ‘Tiger Hill’ and the movie was actually based on the capture. However, LOC – Kargil decides to devote an hour to introductions, an hour to Tololing Hill, an hour to songs and melodrama and a final hour for capture of nearly 4 main points. More still, the importance of Tiger Hill is handled with disdain – A battle of strategic importance was handled quite badly in the movie; that we made it just as simply as we could is a shame on the director’s part about not giving enough importance to parts which should have been. The film could have been literally cut down by one hour without losing any content of the movie; needlessly long, the movie begins to take its toll on the viewers.
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LOC – Kargil
Having said that, I will not say that this is a bad movie. The war sequences are pretty thrilling and keep you charged; Acting is a plus point, with Manoj Vajpai again proving that that even in a cast of 26 heroes, he still manages to damp them all, quite easily. Music was horrendously bad, and Anu Malik went all over the place; unlike Border where the songs moved you, here you prefer moving out to escaping the forced melodies.
Though, there are a couple of sequences in this movie which have been shot supremely well – the initial shots of the beginning of war have been shot brilliantly and so is the capture of Tololing Hill. At different points, you do have some sequences which move you, yet they are too few in a movie spanning 4 hours. Cinematically, the movie backdrop looks authentic and beautiful.
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Finally…
In the end, did I find the movie a good tribute to our heroes of kargil war? Absolutely NO! But is this movie worth watching? Yes – at the very least to remind ourselves of the valiant sacrifices made by our soldiers towards the country. I sincerely wish J.P. Dutta had given more respect to the real life characters instead of using them for his own commercial purposes.
On the whole, I did give it a 3.5 / 5.00. Since MS doesn’t allow it, I rate it 3 / 5
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In the begining of the movie, there is a list of all people who were awarded the mahavir chakras and param vir charkras - I was simply shocked to listen to some idiots sitting in front row whispering to each other - ’’What does Posthumously mean?’’