Review | 'Shershaah' fails to do justice to the real-life Kargil War hero Captain Vikram Batra

Sidharth Malhotra and Kiara Advani in 'Shershaah' (screen grab).

I am the proud sister of a soldier who fought the same war in Dras, and I was looking forward to the biopic of Captain Vikram Batra who gave up his life to ensure the end of the Kargil War - one of the most brutal wars of our times.

(In June-July 1999, at the height of the Kargil War, Late Captain Vikram Batra of the 13th battalion of the Jammu and Kashmir Rifles regiment led the charge to capture Pt 5140 and then Pt 4875 - both strategically important. Several accounts reveal how Captain Batra volunteered to lead the team on these missions.)

As I watched the film Shershaah, my heart sank when I heard someone say: "Har fauji ka sapna hota hai ki woh war join kar sake (It's every soldier's dream to fight a war)." I shouted, "No! Our soldiers cannot be portrayed as warmongers. In fact, they are acutely aware that they have picked up a gun to protect and defend. No soldier finds joy in war. No one should."

The biggest mistake this film makes - perhaps because it wants to shine the spotlight on Captain Vikram Batra - is that it makes everyone else look somehow less heroic. An army is a collective noun. Victory comes because everyone plays their part, everyone follows a chain of command (the oath the officers take when they graduate from the Indian Military Academy is to do just that "to the peril of my life").

Also read: Indian war epic 'Shershaah' hits screens in time for India's Independence Day

Take the film Lakshya - the filmmakers based some of the action on Captain Vikram Batra's scaling of points 5140 and 4875.

Now Hrithik Roshan is the hero, but he’s not the only hero. There’s Colonel Damle (Amitabh Bachchan), Pradeep (Aditya Srivastav), Akbar, Sudhir Mishra who plays the doc who saves lives in the medicine tent, Captain Saket, Captain Abeer, Captain Ramanna and yes, the old man who has lots and lots of experience: Om Puri as Pritam Singh. Everyone has a fabulous role to play which makes Hrithik’s final planting of the Indian flag that much more heroic. He’s in great company. Shershaah’s very Hollywood war movie inspired ‘Delta company’ just pales in comparison to the Pakistani soldier taunting the Indian soldiers: "Hame Madhuri Dixit de do and we will leave."

Lakshya is on Amazon Prime Video too. Watch it and you will realise that even though the film released in 2004, the action sequences are far superior to what you see in Shershaah. (In an earlier interview to Moneycontrol, director Vishnuvardhan had explained that the "action in the film is referenced from actual events". "We were shooting with sharp rock edges and along a steep slope. Fighting on an incline is all the more challenging, so when filming I have to document it and feel like I am right in there," he had said.)

In Lakshya, the buildup of the song "Hum chalte hain aise toh dushman ke dil hilte hain" makes you anticipate a fight. You are so invested in each of the characters that you grieve when Akbar dies. You know it’s Captain Ramanna that Hrithik’s Captain Shergill has saved. In Shershaah, the movie is so busy showing Viki as the only hero, it doesn’t invest in the lives of the fellow soldiers he saves. It’s as the young people of today say, ‘Meh’.

It’s great to see the transformation of an aimless lad into an army officer in Lakshya by showing how he trains hard. In Shershaah, we know he wanted to become an officer in the army from the beginning, so why didn’t they invest in a small montage to show Vikram Batra training to become an officer?

Even when they show Sidharth Malhotra romancing Dimple as a college dude, he seems to be such a misfit. Why does he have to channelise his inner Shah Rukh Khan when romancing the girl? Why did I say Shah Rukh? Listen to the piano play during the great romantic proposal scene. It sounds like it’s playing the song Hawayein from Harry Met Sejal.

And poor Kiara Advani! She’s rather pretty, has such a happy screen presence, but is reduced to speaking in a very poor Punjabi accent. We would have been okay to hear Hindi from both the hero and heroine. The khichadi of Punjabi, Hindi and English grated the ears. It was nicer to concentrate on the pretty earrings Kiara Advani wore.

My heart broke when they showed the bad guy Haider say something like: you can kill one Haider but you cannot win the war. And then, Sidharth Malhotra does something that’s considered a war crime: he shoots an unarmed man when he’s down. No matter what the provocation (Haider says, tum logon ki maut aasmaan se barsegi, tumhe toh andaza bhi nahi hai ki tumhara kya hashr hone wala hai’) it seems wrong to show a heroic figure killing an unarmed man especially because you're trying to show him as the most awesome figure.

It brought me back to Amitabh Bachchan’s dialogue from the Farhan Akhtar film Lakshya, when the troops don’t want to bury the killed Pakistani soldiers with proper rites. He calmly tells the troops that they may have returned our soldiers after torturing and brutalising the bodies, but there is a difference between them and us, and that difference should remain. Now that’s something else. An example of honour. Shershaah falls woefully short on connecting your heart and mind in this manner.

The end credits of Shershaah are practically brilliant, because the casting seems to be practically perfect. The real life footage of Captain Vikram Batra was so amazing, you wish they had more of that kind of footage and had produced a documentary instead of this ridiculous biopic that does the real life Kargil war hero no justice at all.

Even though Sidharth Malhotra is rather nice looking, his acting skills cannot be that of a Jenga tile. Perhaps it’s not his fault. The filmmakers should know that he’s more likely to say "Ishq wala love" rather than let out a war cry with "Teri maa ki…"