With Paltan JP Dutta completes his war trilogy. Border starring Sunny Deol, Sunil Shetty, Jackie Shroff, Akshaye Khanna, Tabu and Pooja Bhatt etc. being the first, followed by LOC that starred Ajay Devgn, Abhishek Bachchan, Saif Ali Khan, Manoj Bajpai, Akshaye Khanna, Suneil Shetty, Rani Mukherjee and Kareena Kapoor among others and now Paltan starring Jackie Shroff, Arjun Rampal, Sonu Sood, Gurmeet Chaudhary,Harshavardhan Rane, Luv Sinha, Siddhanth Kapoor, based on the military operation at Nathula Pass in Sikkim in 1967, the characters in the film are based on true life soldiers.
The film is visually stunning and it is evident that a huge amount of effort has gone into making the film as far as the shoot is concerned. The shoot must have been challenging as it’s not an easy task to take a huge crew, props and equipment to such high altitudes and create such stunning visuals in such difficult terrain. Even though the film is about the Nathula border in Sikkim, most of the film has been shot in Ladakh.
JP Dutta is known for showcasing the valour of the soldiers in the Indian army and showing people what the brave soldiers have to sacrifice to protect the country and us, while we sleep peacefully. Most of his war films manage to bring the message across. Sadly even though Paltan too does manage to convey this message loud and clear, the film kind of falls flat! There are some very predictable scenes, especially the scene where one can blindly guess which soldier is going to die and a whole lot of slogans in the form of dialogues like: “The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war,” “No guts no glory, no legend no story,” or “Heroes do not choose their destiny, destiny chooses them,” and many more like these which could actually be made into a book of inspiring quotes! Then there is a comical looking Chinese Commissar who keeps repeating “Hindi-Chini bhai-bahi.”
Except for Arjun Kapoor who looks very convincing as an army man, Lt. Col Rai Singh, the rest of the characters somehow don’t seem too convincing. Though Harshvardhan Rane as Maj Harbhajan Singh too is fairly good. There were a scene or two in the second half of the film where Luv Sinha does manage to put up a good act. Some scenes in the film look fake like the one where a group of soldiers sit around the bonfire in a circle and collectively stare at photographs of their families back home. There are some scenes in the film where the Chinese and Indian soldiers look almost like school children squabbling and pelting stones at each other!
However, towards the end of the film, you do feel a lump in your throat when you see the number of lives lost in the border. You are reminded of how tough a soldiers life actually is and how they leave their loved ones behind to safeguard the country. While we tolerate so many baseless films that are being made, why not go and watch a film that has put in so much effort to recreate history?
