Heroes

After a long time, an actual ‘new’ story in a hindi movie – two lazy, good-for-nothing filmmaking students decide to make a graduation project movie about “Why not to join the Indian army” - by capturing the emotions of the family members of 3 deceased soldiers, to whom they will deliver the ‘last letter’ written by the soldiers. The idea being to capture the sorrow and hardships faced by the families after the soldiers are gone …

Any casual movie-goer can tell you – the idea, if properly executed, can be a blockbuster.

Unfortunately, the director - Samir Karnik (Kyun Ho Gaya Na, Nanhe Jaisalmer) – was probably not the best person to bring the story to the big screen. In my opinion, he lacked the depth and vision, to bring this story to life in a way that would touch the viewer throughout the movie – instead of just the couple of tear jerker scenes (done admirably by Preity Zinta and Mithun Chakraborty). It reflects in the choice of actors as well – the Deol brothers, for example. No disrespect to them, but subtly showing emotions is probably not their strength.

And this lack of subtlety is what destroys the movie in the end. This movie needed to connect with the viewer emotionally – making you feel for each of the families. Instead, the director goes for some extremely over-the-top sequences, which jarr your senses and completely obliterate any emotional connection you might have been making with the movie – to highlight a couple, the Sunny Deol pub fight sequence and the rugby sequence at the end. Neither do the number of songs or their picturization help matters much. This story needed a good haunting background score rather than a “Badmash Launde”.

Among the three stories, the first one was by far the best. Preity Zinta plays a Punjabi widow struggling to provide for her family after her husband’s death – played by Salman Khan, who gives a restrained performance after god-knows-how-many-years !! (some reviews claim its Salman’s best performance in years !!). The other two stories, apart from not-so-good acting, suffered from lack of credibility – they just didn’t seem real ! A father CAN be angry at his soldier son for leaving him alone – but the way his anger is defused is ridiculous ! Left to me, I would have completely changed the Deol brothers story into something more believable – but that’s probably why I am just criticizing on my computer and not making movies myself.

Sohail Khan and Vatsal Seth play the roving students and do a pretty good job – you can see that they are intrinsically good human beings, despite their tomfoolery. And their funny sequences help break the serious mood of the movie. Ofcourse mention has to be made of the opening sequences filched shamelessly from Friends (Ross’ leather pants) and the book Five Point Someone (when Hari wears the Prof Cherian’s shirt and goes out in his car – only to run into Prof. Cherian himself)

This movie has its high points – but the emotional connect is totally lacking. Most of the audience appreciates what the soldiers do for us – a film depicting the lives of their families should be ... just better somehow.