Based on the true story of Captain Vikram Batra, whose amazing bravery in the face of certain death made him one of the Kargil conflict’s shining stars. ‘Shershaah’ can give you the right patriotic goosebumps that a good war picture should have.
It starts with a battle to retake one of the critical bunkers high on a border mountain that has been seized by Pakistani soldiers. Bullets fly, soldiers aim and shoot while ducking enemy fire, grenades are thrown, and flesh is ripped apart. We should have had our hearts in our mouths by rights and the adrenaline was pumping hard enough.
Shershaah’s ‘character moments’ are, thankfully, an afterthought.
Vikram goes to war and Dimple is left behind with no choice but to write him letters. This works out beautifully for all of us, including the actors.
Captain Batra, as played by Malhotra, is a showboat and a saint. He soon makes friends in his regiment as well as among the Kashmiris with whom he sips cups of kahwa on his first posting. His brothers in arms urge him not to grow too involved, but Captain Batra refuses to listen.
The first thing you’ll realise about Capt Batra is – besides that he had an identical twin brother (Vishal), a girlfriend he loved dearly (Dimple Cheema/Kiara Advani); and both are around — he was a full-on ‘filmy’ man. Or, as they say in movies, a “very theatrical” personality! Some of the most “filmy” moments in this film are the truest to life situations! Whether it’s him extracting blood from his finger and applying it to his girlfriend’s forehead as sindoor. “I’ll come back with a flag — whether flying or draped in it,” he says to his friend. Even the dialogue about how you “live by chance, love by choice, and kill by profession!” is probably a guess.
Shershaah is indeed a long-awaited and much-needed patriotic movie.
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