Lamhaa: A review

Lamhaa depicts multiple issues plaguing Kashmir but doesn't delve into any. The subplots rush you through a village of half-widows waiting for their husbands, who were taken by the police a decade ago; army officials selling their souls to the enemies of the country and violating human rights; kids losing their innocence and lending voice to anti-India jihad; the plight of meagrely-paid soldiers as they defend the country risking their lives; politicians churning political and financial profit from the whole scenario; girls being pushed to prostitution; religious leaders working in cahoots with ISI and brainwashing the locals; and so on and so forth. If the anti-India sentiment of the people in the valley comes as a rude shock, the young leaders' struggle for a better future for Kashmir fills one with hope. However, what goes real wrong with the movie is the main plot. It turns out a bit too flimsy and Bollywood has seen far better variations of it.

Indian intelligence comes to know that a big terror attack on Kashmir is being planned by the militants and Vikram (Sanjay Dutt) is sent on an undercover mission to thwart it. Vikram reaches the valley as a self-proclaimed messiah and becomes witness to a suicide attack on one of the most influential separatist leaders Haji (Anupam Kher) who is apparently fighting for an azaad Kashmir for decades. Haji is saved but another leader gets killed. Vikram then meets Haji's protégé, the firebrand Aziza (Bipasha Basu). There is also Aatif (Kunal Kapoor), another protégé of Haji and now a reformed militant, who wants to replace bullets with ballots. As the story progresses, Aziza gets disillusioned with the radical ideals of Haji and joins Aatif. Vikram, with the help of Aziza and Atif, tries to gather information about the "big plan" and eventually foils it.

All through the film the audience is told that "something big is going to happen" and that big thing happens to be a mere bombing at a rally involving three kids as human bombs. The sequence where Aziza is attacked by the women workers of Haji's political party is undoubtedly one of the best scenes and is bound to remind one of the famous scene from Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore's Malena. Bipasha tries hard to do a Monica Bellucci but her outburst is hardly as convincing. And the scene where Vikram finds the body of a dead kid stuffed with time bomb on an operating table is a replica of a scene from this year's multiple Oscar-winning movie The Hurt Locker by Kathryn Bigelow.

As for the acting, Anupam Kher is brilliant. Sanjay Dutt looks exactly the same as he does in all his films; the same swagger, the same sunglasses, and probably the same keffiyeh (else he might have bought those in dozens). As for his acting, it is no Vaastav or even Mission Kashmir. Bipasha fits the character like a glove and delivers her best performance till date. Kunal Kapoor looks and talks like a true Kashmiri but fails miserably when it comes to acting out emotions. He delivers some very emotional speeches sans any emotion. He looks more plastic in the political rallies and speeches than Katrina did in Rajneeti. Mahesh Manjrekar is wasted. Shernaz Patel does a good job in her bit role. And the rest don't have much of acting to do.

The songs are brilliant in their own right but would better be done away with as they act as speed breakers and serve little or no purpose.

DoP James Fowlds' camera captures the breathtaking beauty of the Kashmir valley on celluloid. But although the shaky camerawork does justice to certain scenes of conflict and gives them a realistic touch, the same technique makes other scenes look stiff and artificial at times.

The script by Raghav Dhar and Rahul Dholakia disappoints. It is disjointed in places, a bit too rushed in others. Also, many characters are not established properly. We never get to know why Sanjay Dutt's character is handpicked for this mission and as he keeps mentioning that he is back in the valley after more than a decade, one tends to expect his relation with Kashmir would be provided at some stage. But that never happens. We don't get to know why Mahesh Manjrekar's Peer Baba changed sides or how he knows Vikram. Finally, there's no explanation why Vikram becomes Aziza's personal bodyguard.

But the biggest let down is Rahul Dholakia himself. The Perzania director tries to blend realistic cinema with Bollywood and fails miserably. Lamhaa is supposed to tell you the "The untold story of Kashmir" but maybe the director has opened his eyes to the Kashmir issue a bit too late and that, too, with the notion that he has actually discovered something new. But if the director stuck to the docu-drama format, it'd have been one of the better films on Kashmir.


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