(The complete title was - India is more than just clapping when someone shouts Mac Pakistani.)
Critics trashed him, audience hanged him and his fellowmen made fun of him behind his back for taking such a non-starter of a subject and release it at such an inappropriate time. That was in 1999, the man is J.P.Dutta, the film in question was Refugee(Abhishek & Kareena’s big launch), the subject being need for peace between India & Pakistan and the ’inappropiate time’ was the recent conclusion of the Kargil War(or anti intrusion operation Vijay). The film bombed and it was blamed on the extremist hysteria generated by Kargil war (though it was mainly due to the length of the film & the pathetic climax). As another honest attempt to see both sides of the coin failed, bollywood was back to jingoistic Pakistan bashing and unfortunately even dutta couldn’t resist the temptation.
This time he choose Kargil War as the subject of the film and decided to make it so big that even Devdas looked like a trailer. The result, a 4 hour long film with 32 leading bollywood men and 9 women, shot in ladakh, no expense spared in production and a billion strong audience waiting with bated breadth. No wonder you couldn’t get tickets for LOC:Kargil even three days in advance.
So first the story in short, In June 1999 regular Pakistani army soldiers intrude into Indian side of the Line of Control in kargil area in Kashmir. The aim is to take over NH1 and cutoff the whole area from the Indian territory. But Indians wake up in time and a massive flush-out operation named Vijay is started involving five army battalions. After a month long operation, and numerous sacrifices by men and officers of army, the intruders are driven back to the other side of LOC.
Fisrt the good things. Dutta is probably the best in bollywood when it comes to big canvas project. He handles various threads with dexterity of a puppeteer. The characters are well sketched and they manage to leave an impression on you (remember Akshaye khanna in Border). He has the knack of selecting right people for the right roles. The war choreography is as good as borer though with technological advance could have been better. Background score is decent an so are the songs though considering their length not more than couple are required. But the best part as always with dutta’s films is the cinematography.
Performances don’t disappoint either. While it was just Paisa Wasool to watch Aasutosh Raana & Manoj Vajpayee together as two Yogendra yadavs, talking about everything from weding night to war nights and not to mention the couplets they would slip in between. Kiran kumar & Raj Babbar chipped in with decent performances. Sanjay Dutt as Maj YK Joe was good though he had little to do. Ajay Devgan did disappoint though. He, as PVC Manoj Pandey, had the best role of them all but he managed to pass through it stern faced as he did in Qayamat and Zameen. You could not differentiate if you exchanged all three of them. My request to Ajay is to stop performing these superman roles, we don’t want another Sunny Deol, we want the Ajay we saw in Zakhm, HDDCS and the like.
But the ones to steal the show are the three star sons, Akshaye Khanna as Balwan, Saif Ali Khan as Capt. Anuj Nayyar and leading the pack Abhishek Bachchan as Capt. Vikram Batra. They lit up the screen when they came, the happy-go-lucky young army officers is the best advertisement this job can ever get. Akshaye and Saif have proved themselves before but the surprise comes from Ahishek. It will be difficult to imagine another Capt. Batra (even though we saw him 4 years ago on television during the war). His Victory Call-Sign ’Yeh Dil Mange More’ sums up his character and what I expect of him now.
But in the end it turns out the case of sum being smaller than the parts. First J.P. Dutaa had a golden opportunity to make a truly great war film, which sees both sides of the coin but all he did was a few dialogues spread in between. Also when will our directors realize that a victory against good opposition looks better. Pakistan is again reduced to faceless enemy, who is no match of Indian supermans. It wouldn’t have taken much to include a few Pakistani generals to show how & why they planned the intrusion. Even Indian army generals speak highly of Gen. Musharraf as a military strategist and his plan to intrude Kargil. Not even that Indian army top-brass is reduced to a stone-faced general with a big map behind him giving orders on the phone (Looks more like telephone operator). Also the film gives us no idea as to how & why certain points difficult to capture and some easy and don’t even mention battle plans. There is nothing to show that the Tiger hill was the highest point among others except the suffix Hill. Not to mention the absence of Ice from the battle fields. Talk about seeing the bigger picture, Dutta looks at think bottom up with nobody knowing actually what is happening which unfortunately includes the audience. I had a better idea of what was happening in kargil by watching the Star news 4 years ago.
Just like Indian soldiers who start firing when the Pakistanis are around and stop when they are not, the audience fluctuates between ecstatic when the metal bullets are whizzing past interspred between verbal bullets, to yawn when the ladies come up. The emotional angle which Dutta talks about in detail are disjointed scenes of the love life of leading men, which occur from nowhere and are too long from comfort. In Border, Dutta builds up the film in first half which includes the ladies and the emotional aspect and culminates with a war , a logical progression but in LOC there is nothing like a beginning or build up, things happen for no rhyme or reason. None of the ladies has more than 5 minute role, which is too short to be meaningful and too long when you consider there are 9 of them.
So much so for my expecting a balanced & professional effort. The no. of times abuses like Mac, Bac are used would even overshadow a B grade Sunny deol flick. Yes, I know its war and these abuses are used everyday along LOC but then why tone down the ugliness of a war. A soldier cannot be expected to look at the bigger picture and mind his language, coz then he won’t be risking his life everyday but a director can. I’m sorry, he may not have glorified death but J.P. Dutta in an attempt to pay tribute to the war heroes has glorified war. May be that’s why the best scenes of the film are the actual battle scenes which, though nothing extraordinary when you compare with Hollywood, will drive you to the edge of your seat.
In the end, if you are looking for anything extra than ’will teach pakis a lesson’ then please skip this film and if you watch Hollywood films you can skip it anyway coz there nothing new. I’m Sorry watching a film is not my idea of patriotism, coz I don’t need a film to remember soldiers like Vikram Batra, Anuj Nayyar and if you need then there is no point clapping during the film. Neither do I subscribe to the fact that such brave men need to die due to someone else’s mistakes and we in the name of remembering them forget those mistakes and the men who made it. I’m sorry Mr. Dutta blaming Pakistan is not the way you pay tribute to those brave men coz they died so that we can live and just many more deaths should we glorify to justify our living?
Njoy (if you could)
P.S- Wanted to write more but have decided to discipline my self to the 8000 character limit.
P.P.S- Wanted to give 2.5/5 but ms doesn’t allow