It is easy to be fooled by the posters of actor Arjun Sarja’s directorial venture Sollividava for it may seem as if the film is a vanilla love story between two young people.
But, the trailer provides a much better perspective about the film: it is about how two journalists fall in love with each other while perhaps being stuck in war. This would be a correct assessment but one must be prepared for how much more the film offers in terms of Indian nationalism and Hinduism (and its symbols).
It is well-known that actor Arjun is nationalist and a bhakth of God Anjaneya but he makes sure to bludgeon home the point: there is actually a sloka-film song hybrid about the God.
- Actors: Aishwarya Arjun, Chandan Kumar, Satish
- Director: 'Action King' Arjun
- Plot: Two journalists go to cover the Kargil war and fall in love.
- Bottomline: Less love and more nationalism.
Though it is a simple love story about Madhu (Aishwarya Arjun) and Sanjay (Chandan Kumar), who are journalists working for rival television channels; it is also a sentimental, heart-felt film about Kargil war.
Mind you, the film rarely provides insight or perspective into the Kargil war itself, but opens up the sentimental floodgates that many of us have (or remember) about the Kargil war. We are reminded, like we are today, about why we are complaining about our pathetic life while soldiers in the border are dying.
We are reminded that soldiers are sacrificing everything to fight for the country, implying that we all must ‘support our troops’.
There is a soldier, a Sardar, who celebrates his birthday on the same day he goes to fight the Pakistani militants. There is a Tamil boy, who ties his father’s ‘Rudraksha’ on his right hand while going to war. There is an old man, a retired Armyman from Uttar Pradesh, who is now serving hot tea to boys fighting the good war, and doing his bit for the nation. So, bombarded with all these guilt-tripping, chest-thumping nationalism, we are forced to overlook the actual story of romance between the two characters.
Frankly, both the lead actors are attractive and also seem to have put in substantial effort, not just to look good onscreen, which they do, but also not come across as inadequate actors. They don’t let the film down. Not even a single ‘war’ sequence, considering that the war brings the couple together, evokes any emotional high.
What lets the film down is Arjun’s unfocussed writing, un-missable lectures on nationalism and using stock Kargil war footage liberally instead of staging the war.