Bhuj: The Pride Of India (Disney-Hotstar)
Starring Ajay Devgn ,Sanjay Dutt, Sonakshi Sinha, Nora Fatehi, Sharad Kelkar, Ammy Virk, Pranitha Subhash
Directed by Abhishek Dudhaiya
Rating: *
Bhuj : The Pride Of India is a shamefully shoddy work , exposing its glaring inadequacies under the garb of nationalistic jingoism. Everybody in the film talks with a flagwaving braggadocio, as though competing for the best actor award at the local amateur theatre workshop.So devoid of cinematic quality is this war film, and so oafish are the battle sequences, that I wondered if the whole endeavour was planned as a Doordarshan serial on the occasion of Veer Diwas.
While purporting to honour our brave soldiers Bhuj actually insults the entire army by deploying the worst computer graphics for the aerial and ground battle scenes that I’ve ever seen in a war film. While Pakistani soldiers drop bombs erratically on the vulnerable airbase in Bhuj, none can equal the bomb that the film proves to be.
Nothing prepares us for the sheer volume of clumsiness and mediocrity that Bhuj so proudly displays. From the opening airborne attack to the closing runway hijinks, the soggy saga reeks of sham valour. Each frame groans with tons of rabblerousing rhetorics punctuated by sounds of aerial bombs dropping on land as arid as the screenplay of this clumsily punctuated war drama.
The director just doesn’t know where to stop. Or for that matter where to begin. The prelude gives us a brief history on the birth of Bangladesh and then moves quickly to Pakistan to show their Prime Minister Yahya Khan plotting and planning with his colleagues to bring Mrs Gandhi down. Every sentence that the Pakistanis utter ends with a ‘Janaab’.
Really, these Pakistanis are such barbarians. They bury poor Nota Fatehi in mud and stone her to death. Whether the punishment was for bad acting, terrible accent or spying…I am not too sure.But Nora, seeking inspiration from Alia Bhatt in Raazi by marrying Pakistani armyman Pawan Shankar, has little to do .
War, you see, is a men’s game. The film purports to honour women by showing their courage and enterprising spirit: they helped reconstruct the Bhuj airbase during the 1971 war with Pakistan, a task they would have reconsidered if they knew that one day a terrible film would be made about that historic incident.
Ironically , the female actors have little to do. Or say. Pranitha Subhash who plays Ajay Devgan’s wife has literally no dialogues. She is speechless.So are we.Navnee Parihar as Mrs Indira Gandhi(looks like Lara Dutta has competition) has a little more dialogue than Pranitha. But it is Ajay Devgan who gets all the punchlines including one about the raakhi turning into raakh.
Sonakshi Sinha who breezes in halfway as some kind of a tribal activist gives arguably the worst performance in the film(hard to say,when there so many competitors) and in her career. While urging her sister comrades to help the army rebuild the airbase, Sonakshi gets carried away and pledges to demolish her home and use the stones and bricks for the airbase.Wonder where she will go after the battle brouhaha ends.
Everyone is in that aggressively nationalist mood when kidneys are pledged and homes are demolished.The women in all their patriotic zeal even perform a Ganpati puja at the airbase dancing and singing while the Pakistanis hover menacingly overhead.In the midst of the chaos Sanjay Dutt runs around in his swanky Rajasthani attire looking desperately for a reason to be a part of film that resembles a Chandni Chowk videogame at best.
The soldier’s slogan in the other release this week(Shershaah) is ‘Yeh dil maage more’.
‘Yeh dil maange bore’ seems to be the apt slogan for Bhuj: The Pride of India. Nothing to be proud about here.
