A masala movie glorifying mindless jingoism

Rating: 1/10 (13 April 2006)

The first half of the movie was promising out to be a 5 on 10, but then they started the second half which brings it down to the bottom floor :( There's attempt at good movie-making , but obviously they have succeeded in making good money.
I admire the business acumen of the movie makers to put in a little this and a little that to pull in most importantly the rich crowds - the Punjabis in India and abroad. Secondly, it uses some cutting-edge techniques to make the movie LOOK good to critics in India who are mainly exposed to trash after mindless song-dance trash for review. This is the only reason I can think for this movie to get rave reviews. And then , there are ALSO those BIG HIT dance numbers which the yuppy crowd goes into see picturized on the big screen. But does a soundtrack make a movie good ?!! Once the audience are in , the movie preaches and preaches and preaches. Then it preaches AGAIN !
I don't mind the above mentioned tricks 'coz the movie makers want to make money firstly , and hats off to them for succeeding . However , strickly speaking about the movie's quality , it has problems.
Today's India is building itself on its IT and economic policies and capitalism , but this movie preaches about how the youth today should adopt violence against the establishment to make the country move ahead. This movie ( and others coming out of India ) glorifies Bhagat Singh etc. a bit too much. There have been some classics about him in the distant past , but the movie industry seems to inclined to portray these guys as the ones who actually brought freedom to India. Well ... like Mahatma Gandhiji did not exist , Or the World War did not create problems for British enough for them to start pulling out of most countries . A biographic movie about Bhagat Singh etc. would've been tolerable, but this movie PREACHES that the techniques of Singh and Azad are SO EFFECTIVE that they can be successful in today's world. I have doubts about that.
Well , Youth of India ,thankfully you don't have the guts to practice the lessons from this movie. However if you DO , please don't! India is progressing fine, thank you. In fact, India can do with a little lesser crime.
Other irritants abound in this movie. One I can think of right now was the evil corrupt and mean politician with an IQ of bird-droppings. Now ... politicians anywhere might be mean , evil and corrupt , but they're generally among the smartest people on earth. But this one was so dumb that he actually criticizes a dead pilot! Not surprisingly , people were not pleased with him.
The list of unbelievable irritants can go on , so I'll end with one last thing about this movie which which is WRONG - it leads u to think Punjab is the only place in India !
But hey ,the movie has the regular masalas for a block-buster - Romance , loud music and violence. Add to that a lot of patriotic hoohaa. Then there's Hindu-Muslim solidarity. So , keep your intellect aside and you might enjoy the movie.