An open letter to J. P. Dutta:
Dear Mr. Dutta,
Man! Am I majorly disappointed! I’m even feeling kinda sad that an otherwise venerable your goodself has been responsible for this. I came up to watch your movie LOC – Kargil with so much hope, taken in by all the hype, and quite prepared to plonk five stars on this certain… erm… website. And what do I end up doing? Eke out three stars and barely recommend it to others!
“Why, Mr. Anderson, why?” you ask me. Ahem, because I… er… choose to!
Sir, I am well aware that your goodself has presented this movie as a sincere effort; you’ve taken a lot of pains, conducted outstanding personal research, undergone agony, been inundated with unsavoury rumours – and above all – have been genuinely moved by events and happenings of the so-called low-intensity conflict, to bring up this saga. But do allow me to look at this as purely an effort at movie-making, and analyse it for what it is.
First, the positives:
And your movie is not devoid of positives! No! At the very outset, you’re working with a story that’s known to the world. It’s not as if you could introduce an element of surprise here, throw in an item number there, weave in a weak-hearted NRI somewhere, et al. The tale is well-known, but only the well-read are privy to the details, it must be admitted. You’ve done very well to stick to actual happenings, not taking much creative liberties.
You then tell the real tale of the painful Kargil War – of how in the face of an unseen enemy brave Indian armymen proved their mettle and wrested back Indian territory that had been illegally occupied by mujahiddeen intruders backed by Pakistani soldiers. You also chronicle well key facts like the lives lost, the risks taken, and above all, the ultimate restraint shown by the soldiers to toe the State’s orders of not taking the battle to enemy territory, even in the face of grave provocation. The key points of pitched battle – Tololing Pass, Point 4875 and Tiger Hill – have been conferred adequate significance.
Most lead characters have been built up nicely. Thankfully, they don’t turn out to be caricatures of the great soldiers they portray. This credit too undoubtedly goes to you. Also most of the leading men – Sanjay Dutt, Abhishek Bachchan, Ajay Devgan, Sunil Shetty, Saif Ali Khan, Akshaye Khanna – have churned out bravura performances worthy of applause.
Most of all, one liked those absolutely realistic humorous exchanges between the two Yogendra Singh Yadavs (Manoj Bajpai and Ashutosh Rana). One also loved those gentle inter-battalion and inter-region takes (Jai Maharashtra vs Jai Haryanavi).
Some of the war scenes are engrossing. The special effects of bullets scything through helmeted heads or smashing eyeballs, and their accompanying sounds, are pure works of art.
One aspect to note was your attention to detail. The clothing, the name badges, the weapons, the artillery, the armoured personnel vehicles, the way soldiers stand up and sit down on the floor without using their hands for support – all indicate a high level of involvement and a passion to get things right.
Again, your movie – its booming artillery blasts, its harsh and steely automatic fire, the yells of challenge, and even the copious swear words – manages to get the adrenaline running around in the veins, albeit sporadically.
But but but…
The one king-sized grouch almost everyone has is the length of the movie. At a mite above four hours, audiences are forced to take leak breaks, and still have time to discuss among themselves the exact scenes that were avoidable! Agreed, there were a bevy of stars, and each had to be given his / her due; but pray, tell me, why have so many of them in the first place?! It looked as if you were trying to do so many things at the same time. Let me explain further:
While charting out your master-plan, you had to make a choice. You could have attempted a genuine war movie, action-oriented and maybe event-oriented – highlighting the dark realities of war. Believe me; discerning audiences would’ve loved that better! Man, you have it in you to rival the best in the business! Take it from me, if you had followed that line, you would have in your hands today a masterpiece to take on classic war movies like Platoon, Behind Enemy Lines, Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line. Alas! You chose otherwise…
Or you could’ve followed the sickening trend that’s hit some jokers who call themselves directors and thrust out what is called popcorn entertainment – a pure masala caper with the war as a backdrop to the primary story. Taking things a little bit further, you could even have followed the seventies style of showing war – superimposed balck-and-white pictures of World War II warplanes buzzing past, gargantuan tanks lurching with infantry running alongside, and a bewildered Rajesh Khanna wearing a helmet with bits of leaves on it, looking left to right – all for a total duration of seventeen seconds. Thankfully, you spared us such ‘entertainment’…
You could even have taken up the documentary style, if all you wanted was to present statistics of soldiers killed in action, medals presented and such. Mind you, I do not slight such handling. If such a documentary was made, I would have gladly paid the same money to watch it in the same kind of theatre…
But what did you do? You came up with a mish-mash that doesn’t fall into any category comfortably. Rather than satisfy a wide-spectrum audience, your movie – in my humble opinion – fails to satisfy any niche!
Say, what was the need of the umpteen instances of the romantic angle, one for each main lead?! Agreed, most soldiers have wives / girlfriends back home they’d think of before the rush of blood takes over. But you had yourself handled this very aspect with superb subtlety and great aplomb in Border, without the accompanying irritation factor! The first hour after the interval is devoted purely to the ripening of each such relationship; and one could repeatedly hear collective groans from the paying public when one more couple was shown doing the roothna-manana routine, and one more song being played. [I have now come to hate Pyaar bhara geet and Khush rahena.]
The movie would’ve greatly benefited from the absence of all the ladies – primarily Kareena Kapoor and Esha Deol! Rather than help put things in perspective, the feminine intrusions end up being unofficial loo breaks! The worst part of this overkill was that at one point in the movie, Kareena even looked like she was rehearsing for Chameli! :-O I mean, what was that lower-lip biting if it was not hamming at its worst?!
[Continued in the comments section…]
