Bhuj: The Pride Of India will push you for a detox. Even as you settle down to understand the story, you are surrounded by explosions, dogfights and battlefield scenes. Bhuj opening moments opens with the hero’s Jeep turn into a ball of fire caused by an enemy fighter jet that crashes in the middle of an Indian airbase. The injured Air Force officer lies on the ground without conveying any pain or even whine the narration begins. The voice is Ajay Devgn’s own.
What’s makes the scene more unrealistic is he barely has any injury mark. It is a movie that loses the narrative as the focus shifts too much around the visual effects, the pyrotechnics, it is too much of overload as one trying to get on top of the other. The Qualify of Acting and the writing is quite sloppy.
Bhuj The Pride of India – Senseless Action and Cliché make the film thoroughly disappointing
Directed and co-written by Abhishek Dudhaiya, Bhuj: The Pride Of India, streaming on Disney+Hotstar, is a fictional representation of an episode from the 1971 India-Pakistan War. It is about the heroics of soldiers and civilians who rebuilt a blasted out runway in a one single night. It is quite a senseless movie that would be best if it would have not been made.
What more you the audience have to go through is the men in uniform who deliver ‘thundering’ lines about patriotism and courage is laced with cliches, with leading man Ajay Devgn, in the role of Squadron Leader Vijay Srinivas Karnik, spearheading the onslaught. The real-life hero on whom the character is modelled is quickly forgotten by a barrage of nonsensical actions.
It is more a bollywood masala that remaining true to the fundamental story of paying tribute to the valour of India’s defence forces. Sanjay Dutt, playing an Indian villager who has free back and forth pass from India to Pakistan at will, has managed to get his dose of action equal to Ajay Devgn.
It is all about Ajay Devgn & Sanjay Dutt Lives more than the Soldiers
The Characters are multi-tasking from spying for the nation and fighting singlehandedly against Pakistani soldiers to defusing time bombs and performing miracles in the face of daunting odds. Everybody else in Bhuj: The Pride Of India, including Sharad Kelkar, an actor who has the voice to rise is smashed to firing jsut blanks.
More than an hour into the film, the focus shifts to a village where women far outnumber men because the latter are all away from their homes in pursuit of work in the cities. The government contractors and suppliers have retreated in fear. So, the Squadron Leader (he is codenamed Maratha Baagh) seeks the women’s help to get the runway up and running again. No matter what the villagers do, the film’s rough patches never end.
None of the women, certainly not Sonakshi Sinha in the garb of “Gujarat ki Sherni” Sunderben who kills a leopard with her bare hands, look cut out for the part. They seem dressed for a village carnival. But in order to get all fired up all they need is a vague pep talk from the gutsy hero, who never tires of trumpeting the fact that he is a Maratha, fearless and unfettered. Neither the man’s exhortations nor the subsequent actions of the village women do anything to shore up the rudderless film.
Watch Bhuj The Pride of India Movie Online
Gujarat and Maharashtra is not alone that get pride of place in the tribalism-peddling Bhuj: The Pride Of India. Kerala sneaks in via a certain Colonel R.K. Nair (Sharad Kelkar). The film tells us that this Madras Regiment officer belongs to a community known for its guts and resilience and that he once broke a Pakistani boxer’s jaws. It is another matter that none of his actions seems to substantiate the tall claims.
And, then there is also the inevitable Sikh – fighter pilot Vikram Singh (Ammy Virk), who thinks nothing of flying into danger – and the token Muslim, an intrepid spy Heena Rehman (Nora Fatehi), who is in Pakistan to avenge the death of her brother, also a brave secret agent, and defend her nation, Hindustan.
So, as you keep yourself glued to the film you are filled with unbridled Pakistan-bashing and Islamophobia, it is but inevitable that the soldiers and officers from across the border are mere sitting ducks, laughable caricatures who merely lie in wait to be walloped mercilessly.
WhatsApp history comes into play when Pakistan President Yahya Khan, ruffled by the prospect of defeat in Bangladesh, tells his men that his nation (read: a particular community) needs to do something drastic to hit back at a people that they subjugated for four centuries. The harried head of state comes up with the plan to attack India’s western front when the country’s troops are busy on the eastern border.
Pakistan’s number one intelligence operative catches an Indian spy red-handed. But this is a Bollywood flick: the man stands no chance because he is a Pakistani who mumbles banalities and the spy is a Hindustani who swears by undying allegiance to her motherland. The latter bit is understandable, but anybody who wants to pull off a convincing film based on true events has to demonstrate a sense of balance. The makers of Bhuj: The Pride Of India don’t.
If that isn’t bad enough, the Bhuj airbase commanding officer would have us believe that women are to be held in the highest esteem because they are good at fixing everything from broken shirt buttons to broken spirits. To rub his sexism in, he also says, in another context, that a woman’s most prized possession is her home.
The actress who plays the officer’s wife, Pranitha Subhash, has only a walk-on role, and that just about sums up this shockingly inept, gender insensitive film. Agreed that the action is set in 1971, but surely a man who turns to a village full of women for assistance when the chips are down should know better than to decide unilaterally what women are good at.
In one word you need to go for detox if you watch this film.