Review of Airlift

Airlift is a movie based on a real incident which has made an entry in Guinness world record marked as the biggest human evacuation ever when 17000 Indians had been evacuated from Kuwait to India. After watching the movie every Indian will think why such brave stories are just present there in the record books why not we all know the story of those brave Indians, why we do not get to see such stories regularly in form of a movie? Really there are so many untold stories in India's glorious past. We are really thankful to director Raja Krishna Menon for choosing this subject. 

This film is a fictional representation of the original incident which took place in 1990. There were two Indian Business tycoons in Kuwait who had actually leaded the whole procedure which has been merged here in a single fictional character as Ranjit Katyal. Ranjit Katyal (Akshay Kumar) is a business tycoon in Kuwait who do not consider himself as an

Indian, he has complain about everything related to India even Bollywood songs. He has a successful life, fame , money, a beautiful wife Amrita(Nimrat Kaur) and a lovely daughter. But his picture perfect life gets devastated when Saddam Hussain attacks Kuwait and Iraqi soldiers start to kill every Kuwaiti. At this time Ranjit realizes that how helpless he is in spite of having money and status, he could not even save his driver from getting killed by the soldiers. At this moment he realizes if there is anything which can save him that is his identity as Indian which he had tried to forget, as the Iraqi soldiers are not killing Indians. But still they have to leave the place to be safe as it is really hard to prove everyone that he is Indian. He decides to leave the place with his family but at this moment he finds all the Indian workers who used to work for his company as well as their family and friends have surrendered their future to him. They have came to him with a hope that he will do something for them. In such a crisis Ranjit takes the responsibility of the whole group of Indians to provide them a shelter. Initially he just starts to arrange a refugee camp for them but soon he becomes involved with all of them and everyone gets connected with each other with one identity that all of them are Indian. He tries to get political support from  Indian Embassy to Indian External Affairs Department to Baghdad Foreign Ministry but most of them refused to help him except one Joint Secretary in Indian Ministry Sanjeev Kohli (Kumud Mishra), with his collaboration Ranjit finally succeeded in his mission to evacuate all those Indians safely to India.
Although we know the ending very clearly from the beginning still the screenplay has been written in such a way that there is gripping thrill till the end. In every moment there is a fear of danger and an adrenaline rush going through the audiences. While watching the film you will actually get involved with the struggle of all those refugee Indians. You can feel joy when they are happy, you can feel tensed when they are in problem. There are different characters with different flavor in the refugee camp with whom you can identify. There is person like George(Prakash Belwadi) who always have something to complain or a sad silent young guy Ibrahim(Purab Kohli) looking for his lost wife. Together they have made a group which everyone can relate to. The dialogues by Riteish Shah are good and not too dramatic still gives required punches.

As a director Raja Krishna Menon should be applauded for choosing such a brave subject. He has done exceptionally well to represent a real life incident in very engaging and enjoyable commercial film format, it describes a real life incident but not in a documentary style. He has to deal with a group of junior actors who represents teh whole group of Indian refugees, for most of the part og teh movie and it is quite difficult to manage such a huge group of inexperienced actors but Raja Menon has done it quite efficiently. Hope he will continue to entertain us with such interesting subjects.

Akshay Kumar is an actor who is continuously delivering good films in recent past maintaining diversity in choosing subject and character. He has proved that he is an actor who can deliver more than just stunts and comedy. In Airlift he has delivered one of his career best performance where he has underplayed his character so well. Here he is not like a regular commercial hero rather he has played very emotionally challenging character and he is just perfect in every frame. He is the live wire of the film.

Akshay has been ably supported by Nimrat Kaur. She is not an actress to be fitted in regular commercial film heroine roles but here she has been caste in a suitable character of Amrita Katyal , a supportive wife and a responsible mother. She has not much scope but she managed quite well to look and act perfectly. She leaves her mark in one particular monologue sequence where her character speaks on behalf of her husband. 
Among the others Purab Kohli is impressive as the loner husband who is looking for his lost wife. Prakash Belwadi looks perfectly annoying as the always complaining George. Inamul Haq who has made a comeback after one and half year has done good job in the negative character of an Iraqi General though his accented Hindi speaking is a bit annoying. 
All others supporting cast is very good in their small roles. Here the credit should be given to the casting director for choosing such good actors in small but important roles as part of the huge crowd of Indian refugees.

The technical team has done very good job to recreate the period of 1990 in Kuwait. Production designer Mushtaq Stationwala has done an excellent job to recreate the devastated and destroyed Kuwait. The same can be said for the sound design and costume designers for making it look and feel so authentic. The cinematography has been done superbly by Priya Gupta. There is very little scope for songs still as it has been produced by a music company so there must be songs here and there. The song "Sochn Na Sake" sounds melodious rest of the songs are just okay, better be avoided.

Overall it is a well made film which has its heart at correct place. It tells the story of the glorious past of our country in a very engaging thriller format. It has some faults but as one of the film's dialogue says, it is very easy to find fault in others but it takes guts to attempt even to fail, so we can just overlook the small faults and give big thumbs up to the film for attempting this subject. Watch it to salute those brave Indians who helped each other in a crisis situation.