Cinemaah

What could possibly be the reason, otherwise, for Anupam Kher to play Dr Singh as a whiny-voiced man, who shuffles around with his hands stiffly held in front of his bent body? The story, seen from the point of view of journalist Sanjaya Baru (played by Akshaye Khanna), who became Dr Singh’s media adviser, is about the shark tank that politics is, and how he has to keep steering a weak PM to safe waters.

The film shows how Dr Singh was seated on the PM’s chair as the least offensive candidate in the alliance of parties that made up the UPA, since there was stiff opposition to foreign-born Sonia Gandhi (Suzanne Bernert) becoming PM of India, and Rahul was still too raw.

Baru, with smirk always in place, often talks directly to the camera, to explain what is going on, among the nasty bunch of bureaucrats and politicians circling the PMO (the set of the office is so garish, it hurts the eyes). The chief baddie is Ahmed Patel (Vipin Sharma), who is a close confidant of Sonia Gandhi and believes he pulls the strings of the government.

A lot happened during Dr Singh’s ten-year tenure, but everything is perfunctorily dealt with, except for the inordinate time given to the nuclear deal with the US, Rahul Gandhi’s tantrums and some media shenanigans orchestrated by Baru.  Dr Singh is shown to be resisting pressure by ‘The Family’ in his own way, and ultimately retreating into silence (that became a subject for endless lampooning) when made a scapegoat in all the scams and scandals erupting around the UPA that eventually led to the BJP winning the elections.

The film could have been a trenchant look at the murky world of Indian politics with a clean man at the centre, but it ends up as boring, confused and borderline absurd. Audiences can amuse themselves by checking which actor resembles the real-life character he or she plays; strangely, Akshaye Khanna, dressed in a natty new suit for every scene, looks nothing like Sanjaya Baru.

Tribute To The Army

The Indian army should not need an endorsement, but the way things are in various troubled parts of the country, a shout out to express admiration and gratitude for their courage is perhaps needed. What Aditya Dhar’s Uri: The Surgical Strike is about, is quite clear from the title. 

The actual military operation  could not have taken so much running time and keep audiences interested, so there are ‘chapters’ before it. The film opens with an ambush on a military convoy by insurgents in Manipur. To avenge that, a small unit let by Major Vihaan Shergill (Vicky Kaushal) goes in and blows up an insurgent camp, without losing any soldiers.

At the celebratory dinner, Vihaan expresses the desire to retire to look after his ailing mother (Swaroop Sampat), but the Prime Minister (Rajit Kapur playing Modi) insists he take a desk job and arranges a nurse at his home.  There are a few scenes of the happy Shergill family, and then in a surprise attack by Pakistani militants (they came in dressed in Indian army uniforms) on the military camp in Uri, Kashmir, where Vihaan’s brother-in-law (Mohit Raina) is killed, along with other soldiers, who were caught unprepared.

The PM and his security advisor, Govind, (Paresh Rawal obviously modelled on Ajit Doval) decide that enough is enough; India will have to assert her national pride and punish the perpetrators of the attack by surgical strikes on terrorist camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.  The film picks pace and tension from the point the decision is taken till the mission is accomplished.

Govind, with an intelligence officer Pallavi (Yami Gautam) and a team of informers, spies and tech geeks, including a cheeky young drone operator (Akashdeep Arora), map out the hideouts of the terrorists, while Vihaan returns to active duty to plan and lead the attack. He gathers men from the units that lost their colleagues in the Uri killings, and gets their “josh” high to take revenge.

The outcome is known, so Dhar tries to whip up emotions through lines like (“You came into our home and killed our brothers, now we will enter your homes and kill you”), and funnily, a hand-to-hand fight in a mission that’s meant to be quick and stealthy. The scenes of the mission are very reminiscent of Zero Dark Thirty, minus the subtlety. In what could have been an all-male film, Dhar includes small but significant roles for Gautam and Kirti Kulhari as a combat pilot.

The film may be populist and pushing the aggressive agenda of the ruling party, but at a time when terrorism aided by the powers that be hangs over our heads, it serves to reassure people that there is no challenge the Indian Army cannot handle, given a decisive leadership. It is a worthy tribute to the armed forces. The claim of a New India that it pushes forward is debatable.