‘Airlift’ is a good film, solidly plotted. Review on Airlift

It is August, 1990. Kuwait-based Indian businessman Ranjit Katyal(Akshay Kumar) is awoken rudely from slumber by the news that Iraqi forces have attacked the city. It is the sort of awakening that shakes loose Katyal from his cocooned wealthy life, which he shares with his wife Amrita(Nimrat Kaur) and young daughter, forcing him to deal with a series of dangerous situations, and leading to the evacuation of more than a lakh Indians stuck between Saddam Hussain’s brutal forces and an alarmingly slow-to-take-heed Indian state.

The film is based on the real-life conflict and bloodshed that took place twenty five years back in Kuwait, and the way it is done—with a sense of urgency and immediacy, bringing alive a city over-run and under siege—sends out a crucial message to star-driven-yet-drivel-producing Bollywood. That given the backing of an A-list star, anything is possible: well done, Akshay Kumar, for donning the producer-with-conviction hat to create a crackling film.

And another pat for the performance. Katyal is made believable because Akshay junks faux heroics for an unshowy heroism, which comes from a place of initial reluctance, seguing into a slow acceptance of the situation, and the gradual taking charge because there is no one else that can do the job. And brings his star power to lift the film, in much the same way Ben Affleck buoyed the Hollywood evacuation tale, ‘Argo’.