Tribute to dramatic rescue, but why the melodrama

Parbina Rashid

A disaster caused by a human error, 65 miners trapped inside a coal mine, millions of gallons of water gushing down, poisonous gas filling the lungs of those inside, a survival race against time — these are any storyteller’s dream ingredients to weave a compelling story. Like Pailin Wedel’s 2022 ‘The Trapped 13’, which documents a rescue mission to bring out a football team from a flooded cave in Thailand.

But all these ingredients and the fact that such an incident indeed took place in 1989 — at Mahabir Colliery in Raniganj, West Bengal — followed by a heroic rescue operation led by engineer Jaswant Singh Gill, using the famed Indian ‘jugaad’, are not enough for Bollywood when they decide to make a film based on it. So what do director Tinu Suresh Desai and producer Vashu Bhagnani do? They bring in Akshay Kumar to play Gill. As the character goes around trouble-shooting for Coal India and single-handedly carries out his mission, with a weak boss, RJ Ujjwal (Kumud Mishra) as his cheerleader, we see no Gill but Akshay Kumar, with a fake beard and his trademark swag. It makes us wonder, if Cillian Murphy can go on a one-almond diet to fit into the character of JR Oppenheimer, why can’t our hero grow a real beard?

When a larger-than-life hero helms such a mission, a coal mine disaster alone can’t tap his full potential. So, writer Vipul K Rawal brings in a villain, mining engineer Sen (Dibyendu Bhattacharya), whose sole ambition is to derail Gill’s mission. And then, there is politician Gobardhan Roy (Rajesh Sharma), who switches sides depending on what suits him.

Gill’s stature as a hero sure goes several notches up as he has to deal with his weepy boss and his shooting blood pressure, an inefficient and corrupt system, a bunch of shrieking villagers, and in between check on his pregnant wife. At least that’s what the makers think. And to make sure that his image stays that way in our minds, they give us no other well-defined characters that we can feel for. Sen is more of a caricature than a true villain. With his love for hot milk and massage, he is laughable. Not even Gill’s wife, Nirdosh Kaur’s (Parineeti Chopra) character has an arc. She comes in a couple of scenes to play the ‘perfect’ wife. She boasts that her pind di kudis can go into labour pain at night and rush to the khet the very next morning to work.

One character which manages to make an impact is an anorexic dog, the companion of a miner. It nails the various shades of emotions as it waits for the master to come out.

Anyway, running parallel to the drama outside, one unfolds inside the mine as the trapped miners (played by Ravi Kishan, Sudhir Pandey, Jameel Khan and Omkar Das Manikpuri, among others) fight among themselves as the situation gets graver. The scenes inside the mine are captured well.

Now, with all other characters reduced to non-entities, does Gill’s character reach the height the director and the script writer had envisioned for him? Apparently not. Since the hero is from Amritsar, some comparisons must be drawn between the two states — Punjab and Bengal. In one scene, the local politician beats up Sen, holding him responsible for giving Bengal a bad name. Is this the makers’ way to make up for the scene where Sen orders his assistant to go down in the capsule lift to boost the morale of the miners and show the might of a Royal Bengal Tiger? The ‘Bengal Tiger’ gets a panic attack and meekly gives the stage to Punjab da Puttar.

A film made on Jaswant Singh Gill, who had the courage to carry out a risky mission with limited resources, could do without such melodrama. Taking cinematic liberty to build up a hero is one thing, but making a real hero ‘Akshay Kumarish’ is inexcusable.