Great act portrayed through great performances

Rating: 8/10 (22 June 2016)

One of the worlds largest aviation rescue mission till date gets carved in stone through a movie.
It goes back to 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait and 170000 Indians were stranded in Kuwait without job, safety, money or passports. The real life evacuation of these Indians have been conveyed through Ranjit Katiyal (Akshay Kumar) in the movie.
It's a two hour movie and it slowly moves into the plot where an Indian cynical business man slowly turns into a saviour of 170000 Indians. The characters have been established with some being interesting and some annoying, all essential for the story. The chemistry between Akshay and his wife slowly gets unraveled and that was heart warming.
The film relies heavily on Akshay Kumar who had been underplayed well without any heroism. The movie is more of an emotional drama which gives you a sense of satisfaction at the end of the movie more than entertainment. In fact, I saw that the entire theatre stayed till the credits to watch the actual pictures of the rescue mission. This is the actual success than amassing hundreds of crores. The movie also subtly highlighted the forgotten officials when the Minister takes the credit for the entire operation and the bureaucrat just smiles and goes back to work.
Special mention to Akshay, who according to me, is the versatile actor of this era for choosing subjects like Special 26, Baby, Airlift etc. He dares when these do not fetch money or awards.
But hatsoff to all the real heroes who made this happen. 488 trips by Air India for 59 days evacuating 170,000 people is no mean task