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Baldawa contributes to the film’s sense of urgency, not allowing the pace to flag even during those flashbacks to Neerja’s home in Mumbai and her unhappy marital experience in Doha. This justifies cinematographer Mitesh Mirchandani’s low-lit frames which are key to building up the sense of claustrophobia and foreboding that envelopes us as Neerja progresses. The director makes a wise choice to stay indoors most of the time even when we are not on the plane the outdoors are primarily visited in the night-time in the film. It is the seeming lack of effort to build up melodrama that makes this such an intense, suspenseful and emotionally consuming viewing experience.Įach element, from the narrative structure to the recreation of a 1980s aeroplane, the costumes, styling and Vishal Khurana’s excellent background score are directed towards giving the film its authentic feel. Everything unfolding on screen feels like something that must surely have happened off screen. The USP of Neerja is its realism and low-key tone. From the moment the terrorists board that flight, we see Neerja’s tears and fears we also see her squaring her shoulders, staying calm and not allowing those fears to conquer her. Perhaps that is the big takeaway from this film: that valour is often about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Her friends and boyfriend (Shekhar Ravjiani) are encouraging her to give marriage a second shot, but she is hesitant. Though her cheery demeanour gives nothing away, she is still recovering from a personal trauma when we first meet her. Without much ado, it is quickly established in those early scenes that she is a live wire, that her family – Dad (Yogendra Tiku), Mum (Shabana Azmi) and two brothers – dotes on her, that she is hard-working and sincere, and that she is a mega Rajesh Khanna fan given to finding an appropriate quote from Kakaji’s films for any given situation. The film begins by inter-cutting between the terrorists’ preparations for their mission in Karachi while Neerja livens up a party in a Mumbai housing society. Sonam Kapoor stars as the ill-fated airline professional-cum-model who gave her life that others might live. Although an opening disclaimer insists that the film is based on true events but is not a biography, even for those of us who may not have read reams of news reports, it is hard to find a moment in Neerja that is evidently exaggerated for cinematic effect (barring one brief background song in the middle of the hijack, that could have been done away with). Together for Neerja, they have stayed faithful to most available accounts of the happenings on that flight.
#NEERJA MOVIE RATING PROFESSIONAL#
Ram is an advertising professional who debuted in Bollywood with the decidedly offbeat feature Let’s Talk in 2002.
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The recent Akshay Kumar-starrer Airlift went several steps further on this front, completely twisting the truth about a real-life evacuation of Indians from Kuwait, no doubt to create a fictional character deemed worthy of Akshay Kumar’s star stature.ĭirector Ram Madhvani and writer Saiwyn Quadras will have none of that.
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The Ben Affleck-starrer Argo diminished many heroes to over-state the US’ role in a real-life escape of potential American hostages from Iran. Neerja is the kind of project that a conventional Bollywood (or for that matter Hollywood) filmmaker would have been tempted to over-dramatise with voluble dialogues and music, while giving short shrift to facts in a bid to needlessly lionise the central character. The question here is how it is served by this telling. Her sacrifice could move an iceberg to tears. Neerja was posthumously awarded the Ashok Chakra, India’s highest civilian honour for peacetime bravery, Pakistan’s Tamgha-e-Insaaniyat and several awards in the United States, headquarters of the now-defunct Pan Am. Her 23rd birthday was just two days away. Neerja is said to have alerted the cockpit as soon as gun-wielding men boarded at Karachi airport, thus ensuring that the pilot and co-pilot deplaned immediately and nixed the intruders’ original plan to get the aircraft flown to another country.Īs a result of her continued presence of mind under highly stressful circumstances, she subsequently managed to save most of the people in her charge and died shielding children from bullets. If you were around in that decade, you would remember her - a young woman who is now part of contemporary India’s folklore of courage. Neerja is a biopic of the airline purser who lost her life saving passengers on the US-bound Pan Am Flight 73 hijacked by Palestinian terrorists in Karachi in September 1986. Sonam Kapoor in a youtube screen grab from Neerja.