'Bhuj - The Pride of India', 'Shershaah' and Bollywood's legacy of blockbuster war movies

Ajay Devgn in 'Bhuj - The Pride of India'. The film released on Disney+Hotstar ahead of Independence Day 2021. (Image: screen grab)

Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior, Bollywood's last big blockbuster in theatres before the pandemic, did Rs280 crore of business back in January 2020. The Ajay Devgn-starrer had a blend of patriotism and nationalism at its core.

A year before that, Uri - The Surgical Strike, released in January 2019, took a haul of Rs244.2 crore. This film dealt with the Indian army's courage in the face of adversity.

Had things stayed on course in 2020, films like Ajay Devgn's Bhuj - The Pride of India, Akshay Kumar's Prithviraj, Sidharth Malhotra's Shershaah, Adivi Sesh's Major, and perhaps the biggest of them all, S.S. Rajamouli's RRR would have released in the same year.

Clearly, movies about the country and war movies are again attracting the attention of film-makers and audiences.

Track record

True, movies with nationalist fervour have come out with some regularity in India. And some have done reasonably well. Of late, though, the trend towards films with a nationalist feeling has become more pronounced, courtesy Akshay Kumar.

Consider commercial successes like Mission Mangal (over Rs200 crore haul), Kesari (Rs154.41 crore), Airlift (Rs129 crores), Rustom (Rs128 crore) and Holiday (Rs113 crores) - all starring Akshay Kumar.

In the midst of these releases, Alia Bhatt scored her first 100-crore film with Raazi (Rs124 crores). The film is based on the true story of an Indian spy, and furthers the idea that the genre is for keeps.

Of course films like Airlift and Raazi have the larger nationalism/patriotism theme. Question is: are movies that specifically have war as their key element also making big money?

Border and back

When it came out in 1997, J.P. Dutta's Border accumulated Rs40 crore - it was an even bigger success than Dil Toh Pagal Hai (Rs35 crores): a love triangle with Shah Rukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit and Karisma Kapoor in the lead and choreography by Shiamak Davar.

But J.P. Dutta's L.O.C. Kargil, which came six years later with an even bigger cast, flopped with collections of Rs19 crore. That, when it had taken more than double the opening of Border and wasn't a bad film at all. However, it crumpled under the burden of expectations. A decade and a half later, Dutta's Paltan (2018) couldn't even rise from the ground and collapsed at Rs7.5 crore.

War films are of course tough to make. That is also one of the reasons why one hasn't really seen many films in this genre that have an out and out appeal. Apart from J.P. Dutta, no one has ever made a film belonging to this genre, though a few battlefield stories like Kesari have been attempted.

Ashutosh Gowariker has ventured into this genre but with love story elements, as with Hrithik Roshan-Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's Jodhaa Akbar (Rs62 crore) which was a hit. And Arjun Kapoor-Kriti Sanon's Panipat (Rs33.75 crore), which was a flop.

December 2021 is the 50th anniversary of the 1971 war and to think of it, only a handful of war films have been made in the decades gone by. There was a Manoj Bajpayee starrer 1971 which released in 2007. And though it was a well-made film, lack of any marketing or promotion meant that it folded up at Rs35 lakh at the box office. Today, it is fondly remembered though, courtesy its presence online.

Lakshya, mainly a coming-of-age tale and a love story with elements of war, came out in 2004. The audiences looked away, and the film flopped at Rs25 crore.

Character-driven war films

Of course, there are some character-driven films with a backdrop of war which have found prominence. In 1982, Shashi Kapoor had made Vijeta for his son Kunal Kapoor with Govind Nihalani as the director. The film was acclaimed critically but couldn't do well commercially.

Janhvi Kapoor starrer Gunjan Saxena - The Kargil Girl did quite well on OTT last year and had it released in theaters, had the potential to earn Rs50-75 crore at the box office.

Ditto for Bhuj - The Pride of India and Shershaah, both of which carried good earning potential at the box office. As things stand, both these films arrived on OTT platforms just before our 75th Independence Day.