This movie depicts the war from the perspective of a common soldier, who like all of us is more concerned with family, jobs, home than overarching politics which forces them to fight and kill persons who very recently were their own kin.
Raaz is one of the finest talents no doubt, though he plays a cartoon in most films, yet he has given several great performances He turns a director with this film and what a subject he chose Really bravura!
! The film has a simply story but it's handled brilliantly Its like A Satire on both nations India vs Pakistan and has a message that we should leave in harmony. The first half is mostly set on one location with 2 actors having a conversation. The conversation is mixed with emotions, gigs, satirical comments and are involving The second half has some good twists and turns, the climax is brilliant
Direction by Vijay Raaz is splendid, the length too is only 1 hr 36 mins
Vijay Raaz is superb as usual, he portrays emotions and also makes you laugh at several places, in fact he is always dependable, be it in short roles or good roles. Manu Rishi who has done small roles before is superb too Vishwajeet Pradhan is good, Raj Jhutsi seen after a long time is good.
Coming to the film itself, it begins well and keeps you guessing, walking on a unpredictable path right till the end. The first half remains engrossing; mainly due to the brilliant dialogues having a fine mix of Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi well rendered by two most underrated actors of the present times i.e. Vijay Raaz and Manu Rishi.
Interestingly the whole 100 minutes of film revolve around these two characters only, wherein one is the director(Vijay Raaz) and other is the dialogue writer(Manu Rishi) of the project, playing it superbly. And actually that should say a lot about their exceptional untapped or unrecognized talent by the Hindi Film Industry till date.
So the film progresses fine till its first 50-55 minutes and has something significant to convey about the loving relationship existing between the people of India before partition. But it soon starts walking on a monotonous path, sadly losing the charm in its entertaining dialogues too, taking the magic away. Actually in its initial moments there remains a subtle mix of surprise, joy, comedy, emotion and unpredictability all together in the conversations between the Indian Army cook and the Pakistani soldier. But after the intermission, the two key characters have nothing much to say to each other and the director is only left with the emotional and uncertainty cards with him to play with.
Expressing the truth, KYA DILLI KYA LAHORE is no doubt a courageous and first of its kind of Anti-War film in Hindi cinema revolving around only 2 key& 2 supporting characters in all(reminding you of Oscar Winner NO MAN'S LAND(2001) from Bosnia). But at the same time it also goes stretching to an unnecessary length after a while and thus is not able to build up the impact of its initial hour, later on. Further pointing towards its basic content, there are numerous stories penned by renowned writers such as Saadat Hassan Manto, Ismat Chugtai, Rajinder Singh Bedi, K. A. Abbas, Qurratulain Hyder and more, which are just perfect for reading or for staging plays targeting a particular section of viewers. But making a full length film on those stories might not be possible due to their'to the point' approach of saying things in a simple, sarcastic manner as visible in KDKL.
