Paltan Review - Not Bor-der, but Bor-ing

Border was odd for me. I was young when the proud paternal figure imprinted upon me this ‘gem’ of a film. There was pain, there was blood, there was gore. Yet, from all that inflicting pain, director JP Dutta extracted a true war story; one for the ages - as it combined brotherhood, love, songs and yes … guns. Border was odd to me because at such a young age, I was shocked that something so cinematic could be thought up; an offspring of a parent ever so dark and gloomy in its very inherent concept. It opened up my mind.

Well, 21 years after Border, Dutta’s Paltan is not the same experience. For the most part, until the film’s climax; it’s banal, bland and stilless. Paltan details the Nathu La military clashes between India and China in 1967. As Dutta tells it, it’s one of India’s most honourable victories - only to have been forgotten in the pages of history. But that’s where the problem with making a film such as this comes about. The deep admiration with which Dutta sets the scene is inherently problematic - instead of organically sprouting a story, it becomes a heroic tale - which means that the ‘heroes’ that inhabit it are all caricatures.

The word Paltan itself means battalion. So the paltan here are Jackie Shroff, Sonu Sood, Harshvardhan Rane, Arjun Rampal, Gurmeet Choudhary, Siddhanth Kapoor, Luv Sinha and Abhilash Chaudhary to name a few. There’s also Esha Gupta, Monica Gill, Dipika Kakkar and Sonal Chauhan - who have in numerous interviews thanked Dutta for giving them the opportunity to be in the branded ‘JP Dutta’ film.

But as far as I’m concerned - the women get the short end of the stick. Dutta’s war trilogy (the aforementioned Border, a drudgingly long LOC Kargil, and now Paltan) entirely rests on men, but women too have fleshed-out, etched characters. Remember Tabu, Rakhi and Pooja Bhatt in Border? Or Rani Mukerji, Kareena Kapoor and Raveena Tandon in smaller but equally effective roles in LOC Kargil? These women, played by much superior actors, lifted up caricatures and left no stone unturned. They showed us the more humane side of these jingoistic soldiers in previous films.

But here, we get empty, hollow women that border on the offensive. It doesn’t help that they’re played by actresses, fumbling their way through the film. The cinematography by Nigam Bomzan and Shailesh AV Awasthhi is glorious. Through their lens, even the arid regions of Sikkhim (Ladakh) turn into things of beauty. They elevate the platitudinous story and screenplay (both credited to the eponymous director). So Paltan works because of those behind the camera. Anu Malik’s songs, too, never really hit the mark - but they’re apt additions (and a tad overused).

But in front of the camera, as the women fumble, so do the men. This uninspired ensemble lacks the flair of a Sunny Deol, a Ajay Devgan or a Raj Babbar. Men with real flair and layers to them. Here, even as hard as Arjun Rampal tries, he’s let down by the rest of the prosaic cast; that make Paltan ever more horrid to sit through. Each of the actors, who are given their claim to fame, with dated awful dialoguebaazi such as ‘Heroes do not choose their destiny. Their destiny chooses them.’ Even the might and sheer presence of Jackie Shroff can’t make that line land.

And the people on the other side - the Chinese - are treated just the same as the rest of the characters. Actually, scratch that. They’re nothing but kayars in the eyes of this director; whose outdated vision plays out rather dangerously in the current socio-political climate of the country. The conflicts don’t feel organic, more laboured and there just isn’t enough sparkle in the source material to keep you held for almost 2 hours and 40 minutes.

It all results in a climax that is instantly enthralling. But really, from the man who made Border, that’s really the baseline. Paltan, too, suffers from longevity issues. Dutta’s last film in the trilogy, LOC Kargil, was four hours and two minutes. This is a marked improvement, surely, but it is overlong - and there’s not enough to satiate the audiences or the narrative, quite frankly. And that’s sad.

Because were Paltan another director’s work, maybe a critic like myself wouldn’t be so harsh. But it is what it is. If his first instalment was Border, this one is just Bor-ing.

It’s utterly shameful to see such talent behind and in front of the camera crash and burn.