IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack is well-made, realistic…And yet!…

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My query: Is it advisable or commendable to revert to and spotlight the times when India had to be subjugated by a coterie of terrorists? When a government, coalition or otherwise, had to kowtow in the interests of its own people’s safety to release dreaded ultras? Why make such a series now that the scenario is way different from those times?

After all, all told, the nation’s reputation was in a way defiled when even three dreaded terrorists had to be freed on the demands of five hijackers. What’s more, even if the inordinate ransom demand was never paid, and the mortal remains of one extremist not handed over, all the terrorists went unpunished, and ultimately two of them masterminded the 2001 attack on India’s Parliament, Mumbai 26/11 terror attacks, Daniel Pearl’s killing, the URI and Pulwana attacks besides the 9/11 attacks on USA!

After all, right from Border 27 years back, we have had glorious recounts of real as well as inspired fictional events both in cinema and web series, including URI—The Surgical Strike and more, and any saga in such a category could have been incisively made.

Now, now, I know that the Ram Gopal Varmas, Anurag Kashyaps and Vishal Bhardwajs and a few others do periodically glorify real-life as well as “inspired and fictional” anti-social elements in their relentless pursuit of fame and moolah (obviously not always successfully), but Anubhav Sinha could have chosen a better source for his web debut. The director, whose work includes Thappad (decent), Tum Bin (good), Mulk (brilliant) and Dus (outstanding) has now sadly derailed (Bheed, Afwaah, Anek) and that is a double tragedy because his cinematic art and craft remain above average.

For that is actually the best part of IC 814—The Kandahar Hijack is the real, gritty, unhurried narration of what actually happened, mixed judiciously with relevant archival footage, and also based on first-person accounts of the chief pilot, Devi Sharan (adapted here as Sharan Dev). When Anubhav (Akshay Kumar fashion) has modified or changed the real names of everyone, he could have very well explained in the end, through slides, what the names of the real villains were, instead of giving all of them the actual (as in real-life) code names that they used, especially Bhola and Shankar!

This real 1999 hijack, as I said earlier, remains one of the most painful episodes in contemporary Indian political history. With full knowledge of their powers-that-were, the ISI organized a hijack of a Kathmandu to New Delhi flight and made the pilot move from one destination to the next, to finally land in Taliban-ruled Kandahar in Afghanistan.

And while the Taliban claimed to cooperate “fully” and help the Indian government, who had 20 commandos posing as doctors and medical staff on board their mediators’ flight,  but remained virtually helpless as they could not storm the aircraft.

In the background, there was also the disturbing story of a warning sent by Indian intelligence in Nepal that was taken lightly, and also the trope of two journalists who are looking into the story in their own respective manners as far as public reaction and the nation’s mood was concerned!

A huge ensemble cast provides the impressive mounting for the film, complete with official and unofficial (as in substance in the role!) cameos by Naseeruddin Shah, Dia Mirza, Yashpal Sharma, Sushant Singh and Kanwaljeet Singh. Vijay Varma as the head pilot dwarfs all other performances in the various, sometimes contradictory, shades he has to show. This redoubtable performer again exhibits his formidable range in each character that he essays.

Manoj Pahwa impresses as the forthright Mukul Mohan, Additional Director of IB, while the rest of the formidable lot who play Indian officials—Pankaj Kapur, Kumud Mishra, Aditya Srivastava and Dibyendu Bhattacharya do well. Arvind Swamy as the mysteriously named South Indian, DRS, gets a slightly nuanced character and scores, as does Patralekhaa as one of the airhostesses.

The actors playing passengers are adequate, but I liked Aditi Gupta Chopra as airhostess Chhaya, Mu’azzam Bhat as Muttawakil, the Foreign Minister of Afghanistan, Girish Dhaneja as flight engineer Rajendra Nangia and Harminder Singh as (code-name) Doctor, one of the hijackers. Rajiv Thakur as Ibrahim Akhtar alias Chief (hijacker) and Pooja Gor as Simar Dev, Sharan’s wife, stand out among the rest.

Based on a book by the real pilot Sharan and Srinjoy Chowdhury, the series has excellent dialogues by Trishant Srivastava. The screenplay is written by The Guardian journalist Adrian Levy and while I am curious why he was assigned to write this script, he manages to keep the proceedings smartly swinging between fictional and real-life.

As always, director Anubhav keeps his characters realistic, but achieves some kind of sympathetic look at both the terrorists and the Taliban, which, perhaps, was not needed! So now, I await a positive-themed venture from this talented-director-gone-astray.

Rating: ***

Netflix presents Matchbox Shots’ & Benares Media Works’ IC 814  Produced by: Sarita Patil & Sanjay Routray  Directed by: Anubhav Sinha  Written by: Devi Sharan, Srinjoy Chowdhury, Adrian Levy, Saumya Tiwari, Nikhil Ravi & Trishant Srivastava  Music: Richard Harvey & Alex Lamy  Starring: Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Vijay Varma, Dia Mirza, Arvind Swamy, Manoj Pahwa, Kumud Mishra, Aditya Srivastava, Patralekhaa, Amrita Puri, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Rajiv Thakur, Kanwaljit Singh, Anupam Tripathi, Yashpal Sharma, Sushant Singh, Aditi Gupta Chopra, Diljhon, Karan Desai, Girish Dhaneja, Harminder Singh, Kunal Chopra, Kamal Batra, Mu’azzam Bhat, Meer Sadhwani & others