Independent Movie Review
Reviewer: J Vijay Kumar
Movie Name: Major (Hindi)
Genre: Biography, Action
Year: 2022
Name of the lead actors: Adivi
Sesh, Saiee Manjrekar, Sobhita Dhulipala
Name of the director: Sashi Kiran
Tikka
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“A Hero with Nation First Attitude“
This movie is based on the life of Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, who was
martyred in action during the 2008 Mumbai attacks and was later awarded the
Ashoka Chakra, India's highest peacetime gallantry award.
This film is definitely a tribute
to the sacrifices a lonely wife had to make whenever her husband is away
fighting the bad guys, sacrifices parents have to make while praying their son
is not the one called to war like situation.
The movie starts with the
childhood of Major SU. Actor Adivi Sesh, who has done the role of SU, also
happens to be a writer for this movie. A good choice I would say, as he
slightly resembles to the original plus, also has done justice to the soldier role.
Throughout the movie through
different scenes they have portrayed Major SU to be a sympathetic, empathetic,
kind and humble human being. Whether be it in his family or neighborhood or school
or relationship or at work, he always has that soft touch to go and help in
whichever way possible. A tough soldier, both mentally and physically who carried most of the ‘typical’ good
guy attributes, a rare combination. This speaks a lot about how well the child was raised. Without any
doubt senior actors Revathi and Prakash Raj have done brilliant job as SU’s
parents, throughout the movie. On the contrary, they show the hardships of bad
parenting that Isha, SU’s childhood sweetheart played by Saiee, goes throughout. I feel, instead of vast
majority of rom-com movies which the industry makes, it should also start focusing
on making films on mental health, before its too late. The first half, more or
less is SU and Isha’s old school love. The second half, is definitely more
interesting with full throttle action sequences.
Some of the action stunts performed
inside the Taj hotel by SU as a NSG commando, does not look to be real. But, after all nobody
likes to go watch a plain real life action video and thus, it is definitely
commercialized to make it look more appealing and attractive.
We all would definitely remember
how the Indian media played a spoilsport by broadcasting everything live and, also reading out sensitive information which were useful for the terrorists hiding
inside, take favorable moves. The impressive thing/turning point was how SU
strategizes to ‘fool the fool’ by making the media broadcast an incorrect
information so as to divert one/more terrorists to come to a common place. Until
then, it was one-sided affair.
Actor Shobhita, plays a role of
one of the survivors, who is shown to have put some serious effort in trying to
save a foreigner kid named Shirley. When SU gets to know about the stuck duo,
he decides to save them all alone with limited/no backup at all and, takes his
last breath after rescuing them back to safety and, importantly after eliminating a
couple of terrorists.
Also, “Who is a soldier?” is a
question Major SU has had to struggle with since he joined the Army. It’s a
question he asks himself again even as he fights terrorists in Mumbai on the
fateful day of 26/11 and, finally he shows it to the world. 😊 Jai Hind!
Being an Army Brat, I definitely
liked it because I have pocketed many such sad and joyful memories. May we produce and celebrate more such soldiers. This one deserves to be watched either
on big screen/OTT.