REVIEW: Heroes

Imagine Salman Khan, Mithun Chakraborty and Sunny Deol in the same film. The three macho men of Bollywood symbolise a genre of paisa vasool potboilers that most hardcore Hindi film buffs have grown up on. So just the presence of these names on the hoardings was reason enough to check out Heroes. And as a bonus you have Preity Zinta, Bobby Deol, Dino Morea and the film's protagonists Sohail Khan and Vatsal Seth.

Two aspiring filmmakers decide to make an anti-army movie, justifying the youth's aversion towards the defence services. For their research they get hold of a few undelivered letters written by three soldiers during the Kargil War. These letters bring forth old stories of the dead soldiers and the pain their families went through long after the war was over. The question is: Which is greater? National pride or one's responsibility towards his family?

Heroes has an interesting premise that talks about life after war. And though it does fall into the trap of getting too jingoistic in parts (Hollywood does this much better than us), the patriotism is not as overstated as a JP Dutta film.

On the face of it, Heroes is a regular war film but there is very little action. Believe it or not the film doesn't have a single death sequence. The director chooses to focus on the battle of emotions rather than guns and missiles. And he has assembled a super talented cast to execute his mission. Pity, the big names don’t come face to face too often in the film. Any fan will vouch for the fact that a lot of mediocre multi-starrers are fun just for the thrill of watching your favourite starts share screen space. Here the plot flows in an episodic manner much like Lajja and Yuva.

And the pick of the lot has to be the Salman Khan-Preity Zinta track set in Punjab. The two share fantastic chemistry and while Preity Zinta is a veteran at playing the Punjabi kudi it's Sallu who is the big surprise. Khan steps into the SRK-Akshay territory, playing the romantic Sardar to perfection. Just goes to show what an underutilised actor he is. Hopefully directors will stop making him jump around on screen and give write roles with more meat. His scene in the climax is sure to get a lot taalis.

The brothers from Himachal, Sunny and Bobby do what they do best. Shout, fight, drink and do the bhangra and give long speeches about their devotion towards each other. This track is straight out of a 90's Deol action flick and maybe in this effort to cater to Deols' loyal audience, the director loses out on a bit of the emotional quotient. But the ageing Deols are in fine form in their comfort zone. Watch Deol Sr single handedly take on a dozen goons in the club. It's a classic Sunny Deol moment.

Now after watching the first two stories you pretty know how the third one will unfold. It's only the relationship that changes. So father-son Mithun and Dino's supposedly heart wrenching conflict ends up as the weakest link in the film both in terms of pace and content. Mithun and Dino like all the other actors of the film do their best to rise above the dragging screenplay but with limited success.