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Raja Menon's script team comes up with some nice human touches, and almost all of those are executed very well. The hero he plays isn't bashing anybody up, is often weeping, and feels demotivated sometimes, but still keeps doing what he's got to do. He is the only thing that works in the first half of Airlift (Nimrat Kaur ably supports but doesn't lead). For a star used to churning out hits off the most inane flicks, he is man enough to sometimes pick up these offbeat scripts and unleash the actor within him. The man, the star and the actor - all three facets of him. The stakes become clear and you are now involved.Īkshay Kumar is excellent. We now see the efforts to help the refugees, the complications involved, and the resolutions obtained. The movie stops trying to establish the disaster atmosphere and focuses on the human element. The weeping gets to you and the shot is well done, but what happens outside the car is quite amateurly played out (the junior artistes are inexperienced and very under-directed).īut this underwhelming stops after a while. There's a nice bit of cinematography when Katiyal is driving through the war-ravaged streets, and the camera (from within the car) does a panorama of what's happening outside and lands on Akshay Kumar's weeping face. Menon seems to be trying to do a Neeraj Pandey (of Special 26 and Baby) but with little of his results.
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The happenings on screen essentially feel distant, and none of the disaster particularly registers. The tension has to pervade the frames, the score, and the action. Raja Menon doesn't seem to be half the director he wants to be.Ītmosphere is crucial for disaster films - you have got to feel the bite. Not for the lack of ambition but for the lack of fulfilment of that ambition.
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And for a large part of the first half, you feel shortchanged. There are a number of other factual problems with the film but you don't go to the movies expecting documentaries - you want engaging cinema. Like how the actual Katiyal was not one, but two men. The rest of the movie is largely fictional, though. Air India still holds the Guinness World Record for this tremendous feat. Touted to be based on real-life incidents, Airlift follows the efforts of Kuwaiti Indian Ranjit Katiyal (Akshay Kumar) trying to arrange the exodus of about 1,70,000 Indians from Kuwait to India during the Iraqi attack on Kuwait in 1990. It has a sadly unimpactful first half but hey, it takes off after that. This makes itself evident in the movies because the movies that start off with a bang but taper off gradually are far less likely to be evaluated favourably as opposed to movies which have dull beginnings but take off eventually. Psychology says that the most recent part of an event is most likely to stick in memory.