Movie Review:
The film is based on the real-life conflict and bloodshed that took place twenty five years back in Kuwait, and the way it is done—with a sense of urgency and immediacy, bringing alive a city over-run and under siege—sends out a crucial message to star-driven-yet-drivel-producing Bollywood. That given the backing of an A-list star, anything is possible: well done, Akshay Kumar, for donning the producer-with-conviction hat to create a crackling film.
Airlift draws on an episode in our history that most other countries would have tomtommed from the rooftops if it had been their success story. Not so in India where filmmakers dread touching recent history because of the national penchant for bans and violence towards creative works we disagree with.According to a 2014 report on Scroll after Saddam Hussein’s forces overran Kuwait in August 1990, the Indian government evacuated “more than 110,000 citizens from Iraq and Kuwait via an airlift that included nearly 500 flights. The operation is the largest civilian evacuation in history… Eventually, Air India would fly 488 flights over 59 days, carrying 111,711 passengers”. The film puts it at 1.7 lakh Indians in a joint operation between Air India, Indian Airlines and the Indian Air Force in coordination with – and this is the film’s big flaw – a single fictional Indian bureaucrat and a single fictional Kuwait-based Indian.
On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The Iraqi army took over the city within a few hours. The Kuwaiti royal family managed to escape to Saudi Arabia, leaving the state rudderless. The city was looted and the general population subjugated and made to suffer great tragedies at the hands of the Iraqi army. Kuwait was home to almost 1,70,000 Indians, all of who had suddenly lost all their money, were homeless and scared for their lives. Some of the Indian businessmen got together to form a group that would oversee the evacuation of the huge Indian contingent from war-torn Kuwait. The evacuation was no easy task, as most Indians were not ready to leave everything they had worked for so hard, for so many years. Neither could they, as they did not have valid travel papers as the employers used to hold on to their employee passports once they landed in Kuwait, and those Kuwaiti employers were either dead or had fled by then.
This saga of a rescue mission that made it to the Guinness Book of World Records warms the cockles of one's heart but isn't jingoistic in the least
The film is based on the real-life conflict and bloodshed that took place twenty five years back in Kuwait, and the way it is done—with a sense of urgency and immediacy, bringing alive a city over-run and under siege—sends out a crucial message to star-driven-yet-drivel-producing Bollywood. That given the backing of an A-list star, anything is possible: well done, Akshay Kumar, for donning the producer-with-conviction hat to create a crackling film.
Airlift draws on an episode in our history that most other countries would have tomtommed from the rooftops if it had been their success story. Not so in India where filmmakers dread touching recent history because of the national penchant for bans and violence towards creative works we disagree with.According to a 2014 report on Scroll after Saddam Hussein’s forces overran Kuwait in August 1990, the Indian government evacuated “more than 110,000 citizens from Iraq and Kuwait via an airlift that included nearly 500 flights. The operation is the largest civilian evacuation in history… Eventually, Air India would fly 488 flights over 59 days, carrying 111,711 passengers”. The film puts it at 1.7 lakh Indians in a joint operation between Air India, Indian Airlines and the Indian Air Force in coordination with – and this is the film’s big flaw – a single fictional Indian bureaucrat and a single fictional Kuwait-based Indian.
On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The Iraqi army took over the city within a few hours. The Kuwaiti royal family managed to escape to Saudi Arabia, leaving the state rudderless. The city was looted and the general population subjugated and made to suffer great tragedies at the hands of the Iraqi army. Kuwait was home to almost 1,70,000 Indians, all of who had suddenly lost all their money, were homeless and scared for their lives. Some of the Indian businessmen got together to form a group that would oversee the evacuation of the huge Indian contingent from war-torn Kuwait. The evacuation was no easy task, as most Indians were not ready to leave everything they had worked for so hard, for so many years. Neither could they, as they did not have valid travel papers as the employers used to hold on to their employee passports once they landed in Kuwait, and those Kuwaiti employers were either dead or had fled by then.
This saga of a rescue mission that made it to the Guinness Book of World Records warms the cockles of one's heart but isn't jingoistic in the least
The attack renders 1,70,000 Indians penniless and homeless as a rampaging army goes about killing defenceless Kawaities with impunity.
Airlift is a film that every Indian, and every Bollywood buff despairing for genuinely high quality storytelling, must watch.
Airlift is a film that every Indian, and every Bollywood buff despairing for genuinely high quality storytelling, must watch.
