Neerja is a portrayal on the life of the courageous Neerja Bhanot, who sacrificed her life while protecting the lives of 359 passengers on the Pan Am flight 73 in 1986. The flight was hijacked by a terrorist organization.
The movie begins with introducing Neerja as a young, peppy cinefile who loves Rajesh Khanna movies. Zindagi badi honi chahiye, lambi nahi, she tells a taxi driver who blesses her to have a long life. It’s forthright foreshadowing, because obviously we know the story, but it gets you hooked to the film. In the short time following that, Director Ram Madhvani gets us introduced to her, giving us little hints to her life’s qualms and the person she really is. It’s one important aspect of film-making that others forget- justifying a motivation for one’s actions.
Neerja has had a tough life, a marriage gone sour, work-life imbalances, emotional trouble and a feeling that she ran away from them as a coward. And this is what makes her do what she does. This is how you tell a story people- Not by putting up bizarrely comic sequences to show how cool the protagonist is, Not by going by the manual and writing scenes around news items but by establishing a connection between the protagonist and the story.
overall a grt movie