A MORAL DUTY. Review on LOC - Kargil

You know what! Its our moral duty. We must all watch LOC. And make our cats, dogs and lizards, all watch LOC. Thats the only way we can pay tribute to the martyrs. You see.

Gimme a break! And a big break! This grossly overhyped, self recycled, totally myopic and technically shoddy product is supposed to be the thing that we should be watching braving all the cold and fog and snow. No wayzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE MOVIE

Well first of all let me tell you what the movie is about. Well it is the best form of plagiarism ever. Here, the director lifts sequences from the movie he is making right now and pastes them one after another in a series of disjointed scenes to come up with what is surely the most pathetic screenplay in recent times. The story and screenplay and some of the dialogues are a big joke. It beats even Boom, atleast it had a thread, here even that is missing. So, the movie starts with a batallion trying to capture a hill, forget which batallion and which hill, since you are yourself going to confuse them at the end. And it ends exactly like that. In between you have a few emotional scenes, a few spunky scenes and a few camaraderie scenes. And voila! You get a never ending sequence of the war happening. Give me Barkha Dutt anyday. Thats infinitely more authentic and entertaining.

WHATS WRONG

Atleast Barkha made heroes out of Army Men and not fools who know they are going to be killed if they walk like a Sunny Deol in front of naked rifles and yet they go. And there is no strategy, no technology, and not even 50's warfare used by Indian Army. If it meant to be a tribute, it is a shoddy one. I still remember Vikram Batra saying, ''Yeh Dil Maange More'' on TV and most certainly Abhishek Bachan does nothing to wipe off that image at all. They make Indian Army look like a bunch of emotional fools who still live in Gadar jingoism and not harsh realities on modern warfare. And the whole Army representation is poor. Yeah the director did research, meet family, write some 200 pages in some scrap book and thats it. Even KG students will do better than this research. Did this research have a purpose? If it did, it certainly did not achieve it.

THE CAST

Some of the performances are the only saving grace of the movie. Akshay Khanna playing a jat, yeah right! Cast me as an Alien next. Saif seems to think that the only way he would be noticed is by being a fool and well, give him credit he is right. Abhishek Bachan is alright but I still remember Vikram Batra. There are others who are well passable. The ones whom I would like to mention are Ajay Devgan (what a surprise) and Manoj Bajpayee (although he got probably the best scene in the movie). Sanjay Dutt looked the part of disillusioned men but did little else. And yes there was Puru Rajkumar who played his few minute part well. Ladies dressed in traditional dresses and did what ever little was asked of them with an expression which said - ''Oh come on, shoot this fast, we have other things to do than this.''

TECHNICALLY

Well sorry! In an year where Jism, Saaya, KMG, Bhoot and KHNH have done superb cinematography, this one gets not even pass marks. Angles are all wrong, and the only time the screen lights up in when there is some chemistry between Saif-Kareena or Abhishek-Esha. Sorry! Night photography not everyones cup of tea.......... Go watch Mani Rathnam for that. Screenplay, yeah! Dialogues, yeah! Splitter some words and some non-happening wit and you can write! What works is the location and some art direction. Lyrics are touching but songs like the movie go on and on. Its not what you expect in a war movie. Background score also fails to evoke any response really. Even Border was more accomplished.

REALITY BITES

Let me first start by telling you that I was probably more close of action than you all when Kargil was broke out. Well we were stationed at Pathankot some time ago. And during Kargil when the forces were going most had to pass through Pathankot either through rail or road. Infact, at one time you had to think of Pathankot as last station in independent India and you had to take special Kashmiri permit to move to J&K. During Kargil, whole of Pathankot city and nearby towns were mobilized to provide emotional support to weary jawans and 24 hour langars with food packets, biscuits, tea etc being arranged for jawans on entire stretch of Pathankot - Jammu highway. I have seen those eyes and that anxiety.

Does LOC capture it fully? No.

Does it over glorify death? Yes.

Is its representation of Army correct? No. There were more People from Leh, Himachal and U.P than Punjab and Haryana.

My rating is 2.5/5 simply because it is way too long and without any rhyme or reason......

Its not an authentic day by day operation in the first place, so they could have cut to the point straight.

P.S. - I will wait for Lakshay