Balakot again, and strikingly same

Parbina Rashid

A convoy of CRPF jawans moving on the winding roads in Kashmir; a close-up shot revealing the bonhomie among the personnel, one of them on a video call with his wife. She wishes him ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’ and he promises her that he would return soon to celebrate it with her. The camera then zooms on a red van. Seconds later, it rams into the convoy, and boom! The explosive-laden car belongs to the Jaish-e-Mohammad terror outfit.

A sense of déjà vu? Absolutely. This is one sequence that has been shown to us again and again. First, it was ‘Fighter’ and then ‘Article 370’. ‘Ranneeti: Balakot and Beyond’ follows in quick succession. All three in the first quarter of the year! As the filmmakers’ obsession with the Pulwama attack and the Balakot airstrikes intensifies, so does jingoism. Yes, that too is a part of this hyper-nationalistic package. Here’s a sample — “When Sachin Tendulkar used to hit sixers, your Prime Minister used to fetch the ball from the boundary,” says an Indian to a Pakistani. Take it or leave it.

I take it because the ‘Beyond’ part of this Santosh Singh directorial piques my interest, and he does not disappoint. After recreating the Pulwama attack and the retaliation at Balakot, the director jogs our memory about Pakistan’s failed attempt to bomb the Nowshera ammunition depot and the shooting down of an Indian plane and capture of Wing Commander Abhimanyu Vardhan (Prasanna). Well, the name is not Abhinandan Varthaman, but Abhimanyu’s signature moustache is a dead giveaway. Vardhan shooting down a sophisticated SX-16 with his ‘museum’ piece M-25 becomes an integral part of the subsequent episodes, nine of them in total.

Soon, the action shifts from the LoC and beyond to the control room headed by Kashyap Sinha (Jimmy Shergill), an ex-RAW agent who is consigned to an office that clears film scripts. An aftermath of a failed mission in Serbia not just robs him of his position, but his tastebuds too. Right, he can’t taste. So, he makes it his mission to bring Abhimanyu back and also find out who betrayed him in Serbia.

And since “Ab jung maidan main nahin, zehan main hoti hai”, as pointed out by Raqib Askani (Ashutosh Rana) from the Pakistani team, Indian team leader Madhusudan Dutta (Ashish Vidyarthi), head of the National Security Bureau, too, adopts the strategy of a hybrid war. Enters Manisha Bharadwaj (Lara Dutta). With a tainted past, she is the master manipulator who controls the narrative on social media as well as international media. Others in the team are a hijab-wearing IT expert, a turbaned Sikh and a man with Mongoloid features. Inclusivity is in.

The on-field action in Pakistan — yes, there are two undercover assets, Iqbal (Satyajeet Dubey) and Netra (Akanksha Singh), in the camp of Jaish — goes hand in hand with the mind games that play out in the control room. The planning and execution of the mission is engaging, though it leaves a question mark at times — how they manipulate facts to engage the international community, hoodwink the Chinese to put pressure on Pakistan to release Abhimanyu and, finally, how they convince an international forum, on the lines of the Financial Action Task Force, to put Pakistan on its grey list for terror activities.

The series that blends suspense, drama and action is fast-paced. The dramatic add-ons to a story which is inspired by true events, that unfolded in the recent past and are still fresh in our minds, dilute the narrative. Boastful and preachy dialogues, jarring visual effects, especially the aerial-action scenes as well as the bombings, and stereotypical Pakistani characters are too filmi to be believable.

Coming to the performance part, only Jimmy Shergill’s character is given a complete arc and the actor has made the most of it. We root for him, his eccentricities and all. The others are put there to fit into the scheme of things. However, Lara Dutta brings refreshing wickedness and glamour to the narrative. Ashish Vidyarthi, too, dominates the frames whenever he appears on screen.

Ashutosh Rana as the cunning Raqib gives competition to his Indian counterpart. Kashyap tells us in the beginning that there are Pakistanis “jo Indians ko gale lagana chahte hain’ and there are Pakistanis ‘jo Indians ka gala katna chahte hain’. Raqib belongs to the latter category. In fact, we have not come across Pakistani characters who would want to ‘gale lagao’ Indians, not in ‘Ranneeti’, nor ‘Fighter’, or ‘Article 370’. Maybe that breed went out of fashion along with yesteryear’s ‘Veer-Zara’.