raghavrastogi-97751

This movie takes us back to the times where depiction of love and romance was a bit dreamy and filmy but nevertheless soothing and refreshing. Though the film does resemble Roja and Veer-Zaara in bits and pieces, only here and there, but it takes nothing away from the story, the screen-play and direction of this movie which makes this movie a one of its own. The movie for the first 15min or so feels quite fast-paced but that is for a good reason - to keep focus and attention to the romance between the protagonists, where most of the time and efforts were rightly spent.

While the Hindi-dub was good, I am sure the actual Telugu version must have been better, with the dialogues and lyrics. This is quite natural with multi-lingual dubbed movies and totally fine by me.

I must say, I am delighted to see the cinematography, the screenplay and the visuals in this movie. Simply awesome!! On the story front, you have a atypical national revenge not often seen in Indian movies, with no fanfare, jingoism or hero-worship but more focused on the narrative with substantial realism. Sure, there were a few scenes where a hero might give up weapons to take on a villian one-on-one physically, but that's still excusable with the kind of direction & acting in this movie. The way they have depicted an army operation in this movie, tactical & precise with advanced combat weapons is quite a rarity in Indian movies. Yet, I am not a big fan of the story around and the depiction of the bird-like Drone which supposedly could operate for hours and made by an intern at DRDO. Not so much realistic as the rest of the movie was.

No unwarranted romance, no over-the-top action both of which something Bollywood should try more of. Special appreciation for the background score in this movie, which is often noticed in Hollywood flicks with tense music and no unnecessary, inappropriate vocals on the top.

Would love to see more like these movies, fictional or based on real events.

As the movie opened with its first few scenes, I was reminded of the endless list of movies that came up with the idea of depicting India in hue/tint of yellowish brown as if the colour of the sky is very different in India from the western world, almost like on Mars or Venus. Another movie depicting the south-asian region in a shade unreal and unnatural (an example on top of my mind - Extraction). I get it.. people are in the western hemisphere (and Australia in this case) want the movies to conform to their pre-conceived notion of how India is. Can't see India with a better lens.

The acting is on the point by Dev, Anupam Kher and the others. While I dont know how much of the story-line of different guests/staff in the hotel was true to the reality, one thing that can't be denied is the honor, courage and 'guest-is-god' belief of the hotel staff at Taj, of which many instances are depicted in this movie. Kudos to that. The heinous crimes of ruthless, merciless firing by jihadists at innocent lives is sometimes too hard to believe, too bad to be true.. But unfortunately this horror was real.