Cast: Akshaye Khanna (Major Hanut Singh), Vivek Dahiya (Captain Rohit Bagga), Gautam Rode (Major Samar), Sameer Soni (CM Choksi), Parvin Dabas (Col. Nagar) and Akshay Oberoi (Capt. Bibek), Abhilash Chaudhary (Iqbal), Dhanveer Singh (Hanif), Mridul Das (Farooq), Mihir Ahuja (Omar)
Directed by: Ken Ghosh
Produced by: Contiloe Pictures (Abhimanyu Singh)
BLUF: The story of the terrorist attack on Akshardham temple in 2002 in Gandhinagar in Gujrat captured through the eyes of worshippers, NSG commandos, politicians, the affected families, and the terrorists themselves.
Four armed men killed 33 people, including a National Security Guard (NSG) commando and two Gujarat police officers, and injured 80 people. Innocent people were held hostage and ended up as collateral damage before NSG could barge in to save lives. Pressure built up as lawmakers were forced to take a tough call — whether to exchange dreaded terrorists in return for the lives of innocent hostages.
THE MEAT AND THE POTATOES:
In an very usefully situated introductory scene, we see Hanut Singh(Akshaye Khanna), reporting into his boss ( Praveen Dabbas) leading a mission in Kashmir, and it is the failure of this mission that gives him a purpose to prove himself. We are also introduced to the personal–- professional fulcrum of another commando (Gautam Rode), a happily married man awaiting the birth of his first child, torn between the need to take care of his pregnant wife and his duty towards the nation. The ghastly event of 2002 is presented only from the point of view of these heroes.
IN THE ZONE/ FWAR:
The writers William Borthwick and Simon Fantauzzo have engaged only in presenting the role of National Security Guard (NSG) commandos in dealing with the terrorists and saving the hostages of the massacre.
There seems to have been a deliberate effort to stay away any other stream of narrative so much so that any more human angles are also not explored. Nor are any other characters.
In a Ken Ghosh package, the 110 min movie is engaging, slick, packaged like a good Hollywood flick should be with the right boxes ticked off.
But what we missed was “feeling”. We did not feel for any single one of those hostages. Not one character whose death or murder made us feel that we should mourn.
If you were to watch ace movies like Argo where the script skillfully invents moments of suspense, humor, and drama to relive the moments of the hostage crises or Inside Man, where a high-power broker enter high-stakes negotiations after the criminal’s brilliant heist spirals into a hostage situation- you end up caring so much about the characters that you live those moments with them.
That was amiss here.
WHAT WE LOVED
The speed, the narrative the packaging. The action sequences are A plus.
WHAT WE MISSED
Emotional connect to characters.
