LoC -> Review

Loc Kargil

12th January 2004

Long before J.P.Dutta made Border (1997, I think), he had made Kshartiya, Sarhad, Hathyar, Batwaara, Yateem and Ghulami. A couple of them watchable but generally stuff characteristic of hindi cinema of late 80's, cliched. These movies generally had Dharmendera and were either about Thakurs or about Dacoits. But for Border, he was like any ordinary director. Sometimes success has this halo associated with it which blinds your past behind you. And with no one but J.P.Dutta, it is, especially true.

I won't dwell on why Border was a hit, and how Border proved that war films were an idea whose time had come in Mumbai film industry. We definitely loved every second of Border. Period. I'll come to Loc straight away.

And coming to LoC, it certainly had a remarkable opening, managed to watch it after three failed attempts to get a ticket. A film running for better part of four hours, ticket priced exorbitantly at 150 bucks, 32 heroes, Border fresh in memories, a theme close to any Indians heart, magnificient publicity and expectations were sky high.

I generally don't read other peoples reviews but LoC certainly evoked some sharp reactions. "Stale" said one, "Too long, Too bad" said another but before I get into any details, I must point out that any one who is a hot-blooded young Indian would like this movie. Whatever be its merits and demerits, this film does instil a sense of pride about our beloved motherland and can evoke emotions from the most hardened of souls.

The story is well-known, terrorists backed by the paki army control some crucial points across the LoC on our side, our army wrests them back. It loses some 600 young soldiers in the process and question marks raised over pushing the infantry using men alone as weapons. Besides this JP uses three or four regiments and tells their story, J&K rifles, Jat Regiment, Gurkha Regiment and how they capture various peaks. Now, the idea of having 32 leading male artists has been a bit of a puzzle for many. In my opinion, JP wanted to show that each soldier, each batallion, each platoon had an equally important role to play. He wasn't showing just the battle of Longewala this time, he was trying to show the 'Kargil war' itself with very many battles inside it. Onerous task, one must admit. And in just four hours, unachievable I must confess. You can not do justice to everyone in such a situation, and in the process of giving footage to every one, you cut down on the intensity of a typical battle which you could have otherwise portrayed. The tension which was so palpable in Border isn't quite there in LoC.

Of all the years of watching movies, I feel exaggeration is a very important part of cinema. Infact, it is exaggeration which separates a documentary from a movie. How this exaggeration is done is the art of movie making. J.P.Dutta has tried to make his film extremely authentic but to do justice to those great real life heroes (God bless their families), JP should have indulged a bit. I know war is no place to show indulgence when you want to portray its futility but what JP's real life heroes have done in the movie, our regular hindi film heroes have been doing since ages and single-handedly. Perhaps JP should have used his creative license a bit more freely, he was making a film and not a documentary.

All in all, it is difficult to pass verdicts on movies which deal with war, violence and emotions. Varied people have varied takes on them. I certainly found LoC to be my money's worth but I am not making any recommendations. It is not your usual drawing room popcorn patriotism where there is a bit of slam, zap and bang and terrorists are running for their lives from Kashmir. It is a heart wrenching story of young officers and loyal soldiers who have died fighting for their nation. No glamour in it.

Performance wise, there is nothing like Sunny Deol of Border, no one gets enough reels to show case histrionics. But in their small roles Ajay Devgan, Akshaye Khanna and Abhishek Bachchan do manage to leave a mark. Ashutosh Rana and Manoj Bajpai are excellent as the two namesakes. Others either I have forgotten or had forgettable roles. As for female leads, everyone is adequate except Kareena Kapoor. I'm at a loss of words to describe her acting (if any). Her expressions do not convey anything, and her dialogue delivery is irritating to say the least. For me, she blots an otherwise polished performance by Saif Khan.

One grudge against the film-maker. With real life characters, he should have put a small slide towards the end telling which character was decorated with what honours. We remember PVC Capt. Vikram Batra vividly from NDTV and Barkha Dutt's coverage and we know Suneil shetty's, Manoj Bajpai and Ajay Devgans characters were the other PVC's but for the rest as they say, public memory is notoriously short.

To sum up, JP should get back to Sunny Deol as superman or Dharmendera as the man with the golden heart. Experiment all right but there are responsiblities too when depicting such things.