Sue is a pretty young British lady who wants to make a film about the Indian uprising of the 1920s. This is because she's read through her grandfather's diary and although he was a British officer, he had great respect for these Indian patriots. But her bosses have no interest in such a project (perhaps because she's in the UK), so she takes off for India to do the film herself...with no funding. But because there is no money, she decides to use some college students instead of professional actors. There is a huge problem, though, as the students are mostly very spoiled young people who are more interested in becoming like Westerners than doing a serious film about their forefathers. Can she get through to these jerks and get them to realize the great price that was paid to create modern day India....and thus get the film made?
Like most Indian films, this one is quite long--nearly three hours. And, like a typical Indian film is shows a lot of fun-loving young Indians singing and dancing. I liked the film but think they overdid this aspect a bit. The students should have been oblivious to their past but making them annoying jerks seemed a bit too much, as it was very hard to like any of them during the first portion of the picture. A bit more subtlety would have been nice. Fortunately, through the course of the film, the students did improve in this regard and began to take the project more seriously. This later portion was much better and poignant, as the students start to realize that even today in India there is corruption and repression that must be fought and it's a close parallel to the story about the Indian revolutionaries of the 1920s. I am pretty sure the Indian politicians did NOT appreciate this film and its condemnation of brutal police tactics to squelch protest! Overall, despite being uneven, the film is quite good and interesting as it seems to encourage what might be perceived as terrorism! A very compelling film despite the slow start.
By the way, the MiG-21 crashes which made up a significant part of the latter portion of film have apparently been a serious problem in India. And yet, the film says at the beginning that it's a work of fiction...interesting. Also, for Westerners not used to Bollywood films, you might be interested to hear that corruption (particularly police corruption) is a relatively common theme in Indian films.
