Review - 1971
15th March 2007 | posted in Hindi Movies, Reviews, meetu | | 1597 viewsLooks like youre new here. You may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
| Rating: | Watch for sure - preferably in theatre |
Story-story-story! Not that this subject has been dealt with earlier. And even if the other aspects are just a little above average, it’s the details in the story itself and the narration style that make this movie worth watching. Certainly worth a watch.
Don’t write it off as yet another war movie. For one, it is more an ‘escape’ movie than a war movie. Secondly, it is a warm movie. It makes you think of the futility of it all - the partition, the wars themselves, the retention of the prisoners of war. The beauty of the movie lies in how focused the story is. There is no dilly-dallying, no silly or non-silly sub-plots.
This is one of those rare scripts that can be appreciated without awesome or awe-inspiring dialogues. It has a gripping well-paced screenplay which surprises you, shocks you, and disturbs you. The dialogues are simple without being inane. In fact the restraint used in avoiding over-the-top heavy lines is simply admirable. The very expected “Pakistan-bashing” dialogues are conspicuous by their absence.
The background music is beautiful. However, my problem was with the over-use. The quality is ruined by the quantity. There was background music almost throughout the movie and it was loud – louder than the dialogue at times.
The acting by all the lead actors is not top-notch but is good enough not to distract you from the story. It’s the dialogue delivery of the supporting cast that is…weird. The actors playing roles in the Pakistani military brought laughs where none are warranted. And why-oh-why was the helicopter pilot doing a Dev Anand?
No single scene might jerk tears but it surely brings a lump in your throat when the credits roll – not with the names of the crew members but with names and pictures of the real prisoners of war - the men who put their lives on line so that we could live comfortably.
Click here to read what I scribbled on my notepad while watching this movie (what worked and what didn’t for me). Might contain spoilers!
Click here to see what 9 other reviewers/viewers think. Average rating 4.2 / 5.0: 6 thumbs up, 3 so-so, 0 thumbs down.
If you enjoyed reading this, please help maintain this site with a donation
| Rating: | Watch for sure - preferably in theatre |
Detailed Ratings (out of 5):
posted on April 25th, 2007 at 5:16 am
posted on April 25th, 2007 at 5:29 am
posted on December 6th, 2007 at 2:37 pm