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There is no one story as such in the movie.
It depicts true lives of several soldiers who valiantly fought
for their country leaving their loved ones, putting their own
lives at risk. The tension their families suffer and the characterizations
are etched very well by the director.
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The main characters in the film are Lt. Manoj Kumar Pandey (Ajay Devgan)
who believes in his goal so much that he was willing to die for it -awarded
Param Vir Chakra posthumously, Captain Anuj Nayyar (Saif Ali Khan) who
bravely faced death leaving his love ( Kareena Kapoor) behind, Captain
Vikram Batra (Abhishek Bachchan) a leader with unmatched bravery whose
dictum was ' Yeh dil maange more' who was awarded Param Vir Chakra posthumously,
Gdr. Yogendra Singh Yadav, two of them with the same name, one of them
played by Manoj Bajpai who survived in spite of 15 bullets in his body
and was awarded Param Vir Chakra and Ashutosh Rana who played a major
role in winning back tiger hill, Lt Balwant Singh (Akshaye Khanna) the
tough guy from Haryana, Major Deepak Rampal (Sanjay Kapoor) a tough officer
who cut short his leave to join the battalion and lead his men in the
war, Rifleman Sanjay Kumar (Suniel Shetty) held the barrels of two machine
guns with his bare hands while the enemy was firing and was awarded Param
Vir Chakra, Colonel YK Joshi alias YK Joe (Sunjay Dutt) who lead his men
to victory etc all real life heroes who fought for the country. Besides
the men going to war, the constant tension suffered by the families they
leave behind are also depicted. Some of the emotional sequences between
the men and their loved ones pull at your heart strings.
Technically the war sequences have been taken very well and the director
has put in a lot of effort to look into the historical details of the
war. He held meetings with the army and the dead soldiers families,
scavenged through hundreds of notebooks with handwritten notes on the
war. Credit goes to the director and his team including Bhiku Verma
with his perfectly executed war sequences, Karim Khatri for excellent
cinematography, O.P Dutta for his dialogues, Aadesh Shrivastava for
apt background score etc for putting together a brilliant film. The
songs provide relief to the gruesome details of war. The one and maybe
the only drawback is its length of four hours. The film would have fared
better with its lenght cut short.
Performance wise almost all of them have done justice to their roles
especially Saif Ali Khan, Abhishek Batchchan, Ajay Devgan, Manoj Bajpai
etc. The rapport shared between Manoj Bajpai and Ashutosh Rana are enacted
well. The fact that the stars and the technicians did the shooting under
extreme conditions at about 14000 ft high in Leh, Ladakh adds to its
authenticity
Overall the film moves you and makes you feel the patriotism and the
sacrifices our brave soldiers made for the country. A true tribute to
them.
