As our nation celebrates its 74th Independence day, let's bow our heads in gratitude and humility to pay respects to the numerous faceless people who made this day possible. Though we gained freedom from the British Raj, we still faced challenges over the years in the form of conflict from our neighbors. However, our brave & selfless soldiers have constantly negated all those threats allowing us to live in peace. One such event happened to be the 1999 Kargil War where many of our brave warriors laid down their lives. Among them was IAF Pilot, Gunjan Saxena who was the first female pilot to be part of the war. On the lead up to this Independence Day, Sharan Sharma decided to pay homage to this brave officer in the form of a biography. But will Janhvi Kapoor be able to pull off the titular role with conviction???
Based in Lucknow, Gunjan Saxena (Janhvi Kapoor) harboured dreams of becoming a pilot right from her childhood dreams. Being a bright student, her mother Kriti (Ayesha Raza) & brother, Anshuman (Angad Bedi) were keen on her taking up a different profession as they firmly believed that her place wasn't meant to be in the cockpit. However, her father Anup (Pankaj Tripathi) who was an Army Officer supported his daughter's wishes & encouraged her to strive for her dreams. With the fees that is meant for a commercial pilot course beyond their capabilities, it seemed like Gunjan's dreams were over. But destiny had other plans.
After having plied his trade as an assistant director in "Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani", Sharan Sharma is making his directorial debut with this biography. He has scripted the story in the company of Nikhil Mehrotra who had credible movies to his credit such as "Dangal", "Chhichhore"etc. The movie works for most parts, however it fails to impart the desired impact after Gunjan makes it to the training academy. Interestingly, some of the scenes there reminded me of "Hidden Figures". It's a good thing that they chose to focus on the sexism and the gender based discrimination rather than an over dosage of nationalism. Though only a small portion of the Kargil War was picturised, it looked rather amateurish as a whole. Manush Nandan has done a reasonable job with the visuals while Marc Wolff's co-ordination in the helicopter sequences were pretty good.
So it's time for the inevitable question, was Janhvi convincing as the protagonist? There is no doubt that she has done a good job for large parts as she was able to convey the vulnerability & nervousness of the character perfectly. However, the transformation that we expected to happen after she defied the odds was nowhere to be seen. In short, as the flight officer she definitely missed the mark according to me. The best performance belonged to Pankaj Tripathi who captures our attention with his expressions that spoke volumes without having to mouth dialogues. As for the rest, Angad Bedi started off well but was rather wooden later on, Vineet Kumar had a one dimensional role, Ayesh Raza was wasted while Manav Vij was good.
Verdict: On this Independence Day, it's surely an engaging watch though it definitely didn't soar as much as expected. With just a couple of movies under her belt, it would be unfair to slam Janhvi but the fact remains that she didnt quite have the caliber to pull off the IAF part. In short, give it a try!!!
Rating: 2.75/5
Regards...Ben
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