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Release date:
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February 17, 2017
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Director:
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Sankalp Reddy
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Cast:
Language:
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Rana Daggubati, Kay Kay Menon,
Atul Kulkarni, Rahul Singh, Satyadev Kancharana, Taapsee Pannu, Om Puri, Nassar, Milind Gunaji.
Released in two
versions: Telugu and Hindi-cum-English. This is a review of the latter, which
is narrated by Amitabh Bachchan. The Telugu version is narrated by Chiranjeevi. The film has also been dubbed in Tamil. Suriya Sivakumar provides
the narration in that one.
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Whoa!
And again, whoa!
Debutant writer-director
Sankalp Reddy’s The Ghazi Attack is that
rare special-effects-heavy Indian war film starring actors who get their body
language right, do not look like little boys playing cops ‘n’ robbers, do not
sing romantic songs in their heads in the midst of battle and features SFX that
do not compel a critic to qualify “it is good” with the addendum usually used
in these cases, “…by Indian standards”. The
Ghazi Attack’s effects are good, full stop.
Released
simultaneously in Telugu and Hindi-English versions, this is a highly fictionalised
interpretation of the Indian take on events in the Bay of Bengal in 1971,
leading to the sinking of the PNS Ghazi,
a submarine of the Pakistan Navy.
In the real world,
India’s official position is that Ghazi
was brought down by an Indian ship. Pakistan holds that the sub sank when it
inadvertently entered a minefield it had itself laid just days earlier. As Vice Admiral G.M. Hiranandani
(retd) says in his book Transition to Triumph, quoted in a detailed article by Vipin Vijayan on Rediff:
“The truth about the Ghazi, which remains on what the submarine
community calls the ‘eternal parole’, lies somewhere between the Indian and
Pakistani versions of the sinking but no one knows exactly where.”
Reddy’s film zeroes in on the
Indian side of the story. Kay Kay Menon plays Captain Rann Vijay Singh, the man
in charge of the Indian submarine S21
which is sent off on a top-secret mission to the Bay of Bengal in November 1971.
Singh is both brilliant and brash, remarkably efficient yet a loose cannon prone
to skirt around orders whenever he can. His reputation prompts his bosses
(played by the late Om Puri and Nassar) to send Lt-Commander Arjun Varma (Rana Daggubati)
to accompany him on this mission and keep his wild side in check.
When the film opens, the
India-Pak war of 1971 has not yet begun. The two countries are on tenterhooks
though, with refugees pouring into India from what was then East Pakistan. A
single impetuous act could lead to full-scale aggression. Like Singh, Varma is
brave and brilliant, but he prefers to wait for intelligence confirmation of
what his instincts tell him is true. This is why his seniors consider him essential
to their scheme.
Populism might have demanded that
the film should cheer for Singh and diminish Varma. It is a measure of Reddy’s maturity
that he does nothing of the sort.
Atul Kulkarni plays S21’s second-in-command, S. Devaraj, a
soft-spoken yet firm man whose loyalty lies with Singh despite his brusque
ways.
The bulk of The Ghazi Attack takes place underwater inside S21. Far from being constrained by the lack of visual variation, Reddy
along with his editor A. Sreekar Prasad, director
of photography Madhie and sound designer Tapas Nayak use it to their
advantage, tapping the claustrophobic space to discreetly magnify every iota of
tension between the characters. K’s background score is a perfect addition to
the mix.
The production
quality is first-rate all around. A special word here for production designer
Shivam Rao, the tech teams at Eva Motion Studios in Hyderabad and B2H Studios
in Chennai.
Hopefully there are defence
experts and scientists out there who will watch The Ghazi Attack and tell us whether the naval protocol being
followed here is authentic or the depiction of the vessel’s functioning is
scientifically accurate. To a non-expert, the acting and writing (story and
screenplay: Reddy, dialogues: Azad Alam) make it all seem credible. The verbal
exchanges may be meaningless mumbo jumbo, for all I know, but none of it sounds
like unconvincing gibberish or off-puttingly esoteric, deliberately dense
showing off.
More to the point, The Ghazi Attack is designed to make us
care less about the technicalities and more about the human instincts and reflexes
that come into play in this challenging environment.
When the film is
being straight-laced and matter of fact, it is bloody darned awesome. There is
a special place in hell for those who celebrate war, but given that wars do
take place, this film – for the most part – is a lesson in how they should be
depicted on screen. While the going’s good, the no-frills narrative is so
well-paced and business-like that it feels like the real deal.
Reddy largely
sticks to his guns with this storytelling style, making so much of The Ghazi Attack entertaining, memorable
and unique on the Indian cinemascape. He should have held his ground all the
way, because the moments in which he departs from his to-the-point tone are the
very moments when he loses his grip on the film.
While his hands are
fixed firmly on the reins, The Ghazi
Attack is a thrilling action adventure, the enjoyment of which is tempered
by the awareness that it draws on a very grim reality.
It flounders though in its
depiction of the Pakistani vessel. Ghazi’s
commander Razzaq (Rahul Singh) is the only identifiable individual on the sub.
While he does not snarl out lines of the sort Pakistanis might yell at Sunny
Deol, he is certainly a charmless chap, unlike the Indians. The film makes no
bones about its suggestion that the Indian lot are level-headed, cool customers
driven purely by a selfless desire to keep us safe whereas the Paki dude is
hot-headed despite his brightness, and thus easily manipulated by the enemy who
understands that he is led primarily by his deep-seated hatred for India. Uff!
The Ghazi
Attack
flounders again when it enters maudlin territory with the commander’s personal story
and an awkwardly handled round of deshbhakti
in the end, far removed from the tone of most of the film. An earlier scene in
which Jana Gana Mana and Saare Jahaan Se Acchha are sung works
because it is relevant to the plot, but Round 2 with the anthem is a
contrivance. Those wailing religious chants when tragedy strikes are also
terribly jarring.
Kulkarni is on the mark with his
acting. Menon is intermittently pulled down by the soppy treatment of his character’s
back story and the over-the-top writing of his attitude to authority.
The headline-grabber of the cast
is Rana Daggubati, who is so handsome in a uniform that he made me want to
weep. Be still my beating heart.
…But seriously, Daggubati’s looks
and strapping physique are rivalled by his well-controlled turn as Arjun Varma.
His restraint helps him effectively portray a man of calm temperament yet not shorn
of feelings, compassion, stress or off-the-book actions in a charged atmosphere.
The stand-out artiste of the
well-chosen supporting cast is Satyadev Kancharana playing Rajeev, a sonar
operator on S21. Kancharana is an
interesting combination of charismatic presence and natural talent. He made me
care for Rajeev despite the man’s limited role on S21.
Taapsee Pannu, on the other hand,
is wasted in an insignificant role. As an East Pakistani rescued from a
shipwreck by the submarine, she does nothing but
lurk in the background. Why was this character written into the script? Her inclusion
certainly does not divert attention from the fact that India’s
defence establishment is a boys’ club even today, that it was more so back then.
Pannu’s role is not only demeaning to her
but also counter-productive to the cause of gender representation in cinema. Tokenism in the name of diversity is as offensive as exclusion
itself.
This along with the uncomfortable
handling of patriotism and some of the emotion subtracts from the overall
impact of The Ghazi Attack,
especially because most of the latter two are rolled out post-interval, thus dominating
the parting impression of the film.
Still, there is much more to like
than not. A toast please to the technical finesse
attained by Reddy and his top-notch crew. No artificially pumped up patriotism is
needed when a film makes viewers so damned proud of the work their fellow
Bharatvaasis have done on it.
This then is what The Ghazi Attack adds up to: 70% cracking
suspense (which is remarkable since we know the outcome from the start), 30% clumsy
deshbhakti and mawkishness. War is
not something any decent human being should celebrate. What this uncommon film
achieves though for war films in India is worth a champagne glass or two.
Rating
(out of five stars): **3/4
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CBFC Rating (India):
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UA
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Running time:
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125 minutes
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