Wednesday, February 22, 2017
The Ghazi Attack
Underwater Battle
The setting is the Bay of Bengal, where the Pakistani submarine Ghazi led by Captain Razzak (Rahul Singh), is sent to sink India’s warship Vikrant. Going by intelligence reports, S-21, an Indian submarine under the command of the hot-headed, Pakistan-hating Captain Rann Vijay Singh (Kay Kay Menon) is assigned the duty of checking on any Pakistani intrusion. His deputies are the calm Lieutenant Commander Arjun Verma (Rana Dagubbati); and Officer Devaraj (Atul Kulkarni) and there is an internecine battle of egos being fought as well.
There have been so few films about the wars India has fought in recent times, that anything seems to be a welcome addition to films on contemporary history.
And, amidst the well-documented reports of the Indo-Pak war of 1971, there is the mostly unknown incident involving an incident at sea (there is a swarm of disclaimers at the beginning), on which Sankalp Reddy’s The Ghazi Attack is based—suitably fictionalised
The setting is the Bay of Bengal, where the Pakistani submarine Ghazi led by Captain Razzak (Rahul Singh), is sent to sink India’s warship Vikrant. Going by intelligence reports, S-21, an Indian submarine under the command of the hot-headed, Pakistan-hating Captain Rann Vijay Singh (Kay Kay Menon) is assigned the duty of checking on any Pakistani intrusion. His deputies are the calm Lieutenant Commander Arjun Verma (Rana Dagubbati); and Officer Devaraj (Atul Kulkarni) and there is an internecine battle of egos being fought as well.
The sets of the submarines are very well-created and the feeling of claustrophobia is heightened with the tension building inside the testosterone-filled sub (the only female being a redundant Bangladeshi refugee played by Tapsee Pannu) and the exchange of fire power outside.
The main attraction of the film is that it came out with so little advance publicity that audiences do not know what to expect. What they do get is a competently made war film—a little too ambitious for its own good, but keeping the pace brisk, the story-telling interesting and the predictable climax as exciting as can be. The making is lean, without too much melodramatic fat, and no pushing of patriotic buttons over what is built into the story. A bit of ‘dialoguebaazi’ and simplistic portrayal of the Indian and Pakistani sides could be overlooked in the interest of entertainment.
Labels: Cinemaah
