Kurukshetra Malayalam Movie
Describing Major Ravi's Kurukshetra as an excellently crafted and highly impressive movie would be sycophantic. Ranking it among the best of war classics would be doing injustice to other films. Kurukshetra, which has Mohanlal in the lead role, begins rather unimpressively and tends to be sluggish at times, but things pick up in the post-interval section and moves on to a rather arresting climax.
Kurukshetra narrates in detail how Indian soldiers fought bravely against Pakistan at Kargil, amidst all kinds of hurdles and practical hardships. The regiment that sets out to fight against the Pakistani army is headed by Colonel Mahadevan, a war veteran who is not only brave and clever, but determined and at times ruthlessly bold too. He has in his regiment some of the best army officers - people like Subedar Fussy Ahmed, Major Rajesh etc, who are ready to die for the country. The movie narrates how Colonel Mahadevan and his regiment inch their way forward in their battle to conquer the Kargil heights.
Mohanlal is good as Colonel Mahadevan, but there are places where his performance falls short of what he delivered as Major Mahadevan in Keerthi Chakra (Major Ravi's first film). At the same time there are scenes where his performance is very impressive, like the one where he clashes with his superior officer saying that he won't let a journalist accompany his regiment and also where he speaks about saving the wireless operator Saravanan from the enemy.
Siddique as Fussy Ahmed, Biju Menon as Major Rajesh and the others have done their parts fairly well, though no one is overly impressive. The same goes for the female characters in the movie. Cochin Haneefa and Suraaj Venjaramoodu provide some amount of comic relief. Though a couple of songs are good, the others are just average. Loganathan's cinematography is the main highlight of the film, with full support given by the editor and the art-director.
To sum up, Kurukshetra is not as impressive as Major Ravi's first film Keerthi Chakra, but is better than his second venture Mission 90 Days. Major Ravi has used his experience in the army to re-create the atmosphere of war, and the war-sequences have been shot rather well. But as a director he should have paid more attention to some seemingly less significant scenes too. Kurukshetra may not appeal to those who have seen well made war movies, but to the average film-viewer it could well be a treat. With nothing great happening at the box office it might even turn out to be a financial success.
OTHER REVIEWS
