Airlift Review: Akshay is impressive. Review on Airlift

The film captures the story of the Indians stuck in Kuwait during that time, through the eyes of Ranjit Katiyal and a few other characters. This is a story about how these Indians, with the help of Ranjit Katiyal, managed to survive the Iraqi invasion, andagainst all odds, move across Iraq into Jordan, from where they were brought home to India by the largest ever Airlift attempted in the history of the world.

The trailer of Arlift answers this question in a very direct way: when calamity strikes, heroes come up on their own volition.

The smartly executed action sequences and Akshay Kumar’s towering presence indicate the arrival of an important new director Raja Krishna Menon . The packaging  of the material is so precise and unapologetic we get the feeling of being there during the time of the action. The trailer  is shot with tremendous savoir-faire, going neither overboard with the thrillers, nor downplaying it just to seem cooler than Argo.Or Baby.

When it comes to the working-class hero Akshay Kumar is the superman of the  genre. In the brief but brilliant trailer of Airliftwhich is just out, Akshay not only owns the screen he also talks directly to us explaining the historic perspective of the film so succinctly we feel we are there in Kuwait in 1990 when Saddam Hussain’s attack happened.

There is a virile vividness about the trailer underscored by the presence of a hero who is at once strong and vulnerable. Akshay Kumar’s incredible and growing-with-every-film screen presence is increasingly being used by filmmakers to  create a historical perspective in our cinema. We saw him tackle global terrorism with unostentatiouspanache in Baby.

In Airlift it’s a more intimate chunk of thrilling history chosen to  spotlight the actor’s ability to be so convincingly and unconditionally heroic during times of unmitigated stress.As Akshay tells us, this is Kuwait in August 1990 when a trigger-happy lunatic decided to take over leaving 1 lakh 70, 000 Indians stranded in  the grip of a stunning siege.

In 1990, during the first Gulf War, over 170, 000 Indians were stranded in Kuwait when it was attacked by Iraq. A few local businessmen and Indian diplomats took on the valiant, significantly uphill task of bringing those people home.

The number itself is staggering - necessitating nearly 500 aeroplanes full of people - andAirlift, for the most part, delivers this action with efficiency and a relative lack of exaggerated drama.

The situation itself is patently absurd, with armoured tanks rolling onto city streets in Kuwait one loud night, and Menon does well to keep things reined in more than most Bollywood filmmakers would.