Shabana Azmi has after ages shown, what her true calibre as an actress is. Be it her playful Rajesh Khanna impressions at home or singing his song in the plane at Khalil’s behest, at gunpoint. I usually am not a Sonam fan, but the maturity with which she has delivered Neerja, is commendable. Sonam Kapoor, delivers a performance of a lifetime and her best performance till date, right from her debut. The actor Abu, I think, playing Khalil is brilliant. Yogendra Tikku gives a solid performance as the ever supporting father, showing his helplessness as he breaks the news of the hijack to Shabana or as he holds on to the telephone receiver in the Hindustan Times office, knowing that something is amiss but still not being able to do anything. Why, because Neerja lives in Navjeevan Society in Bombay Central and they show them driving by Marine Drive, enroute to the airport and even making a stop outside Babulnath temple, which is no way on the way to the airport then or now. It is only due to the intrinsic, realistic detailing which has gone into this film that the silly drive to the airport stands out. Even the altercations within the terrorists is realistically shown. The way he keeps losing his bearings and identifies Neerja to be a trouble maker right from the beginning, is fantastic. The terrorists, especially the maniac Khalil, is fantastic. Her broken arranged marriage with Doha based Kavi Shastri and current association with Shekhar Ravjiani, the debut by the music director, keep adding to her story in the past year, how it gave her hope and made her resilient.Ĭinematography by Mitesh Mirchandani and background music by Vishal Khurana add tremendously to the fear, claustrophobia and uncertainty inside the battlefield, the aircraft. To add soul to the film, the director repeatedly cuts into Neerja’s family of 2 brothers, a doting courageous dad (Yogendra Tiku) and a strong as a rock, ever worried mother (Shabana Azmi). He doesn’t waste a minute in the plot build up, throwing us straight into the heart of the action at Karachi airport, simultaneously playing out the hours before the 2 important set of people boarded the ill fated flight, the Palestinian terrorists from Karachi and Neerja and her crew from Mumbai. Why do I write it that way, because from the word go, this is a director’s film. Fox Star Studios, bring to you, Ram Madhvani’s ‘Neerja’. In the interim, he has worked with Aamir Khan on directing his songs for Taare Zameen Par, Satyamev Jayate, besides directing award winning advertisements. Ram Madhvani makes a return to Bollywood after his Boman Irani starrer debut, Lets Talk (2002). She was one of the 20, who didn’t make it. Based on the real life heroic incident of Head Purser Neerja Bhanot, who displayed tremendous courage under fire in the hijacking of the PAN AM 73, at Karachi Airport and landed up saving 359 lives of the passengers and crew out of 379.
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