Air India 182

I had seen a previous documentary titled "Explosive Evidence" about this particular flight. It used recreated sequences to portray a brazen act of terrorism that has no meaning to this day. That documentary pales in comparison to Air India 182 in several aspects.

Utilizing a mix of parallel timelines, people interviews, actual audio wiretaps, archived and recreated footage, Air India 182 has a powerful impact, not unlike powerful as the explosion that ripped the aircraft apart on a cool Sunday morning in June 1985. We are made aware of the background - a potent bubbling cauldron of politics and religious independence leading to violent consequences. We are told of the numerous mishaps and missteps in the investigation leading to the accident (some look deliberately introduced to render an impression that the flight took off as scheduled without any interruption). We are deeply touched by the lingering grief of family members who lost their loved ones on the ill-fated flight. We are shown battle-hardened air force men and sailors admitting to tears and retching on recovering the dead from the Atlantic Ocean. We see how a tiny little town in Southern Ireland helps deal with a massive disaster and ease the irreparable pain of families torn apart. It makes for such captivating (and emotional) viewing, I barely paid attention that this happened more than 30 years ago.

Air India 182 is a harsh lesson to all of us in "Live and Let Live". We all have differences, but in allowing those differences to cloud our judgment and lead us to wrong decisions, we have nothing to gain and everything to lose. As one Royal Airforce (RAF) airman from Wales says in a choked voice - "I saw a piece of chocolate among the items recovered, it had fresh teeth marks. If that is not demoralizing, I don't know what is!"

Highly recommended.

It was written that at the debut screening in Toronto (last year) there was not a dry eye in the house. Sturla Gunnarsson, one of our smartest film makers, takes us back twenty-four years to show the story and aftermath of one of the most devastating acts of terrorism in the 20th century.

On June 23, 1985, an Air India 747 flying from Montreal to Delhi via London went off radio contact two hundred miles from the Irish coast. At first, ground control did not know what the problem was, so picture if you will the horror they must've felt when they realized that the plane had exploded killing all 329 passengers (some sources say 331). Suspicion was traced back to Khalistani terrorists in Vancouver, who had been monitored by the Canadian Intelligence Service months before the incident (they couldn't get anything conclusive). The movie tracks this investigation and interviews the relatives of many of those who died.

A good portion of Air India 182 is performative. Using actors and locations, Gunnarsson recreates the Canadian investigation, the flight preparation, and the checking through of some of the passengers, whose relatives he managed to contact decades later for interviews. While speaking, many fight to hold back tears.

If there is a problem with the movie, it would be the complexity of the presentation. Air India 182 requires your full attention, and some of the facts which are presented are difficult to process. It also jumps around quite a bit, flashing backwards and forwards.

At least the last third, which is the most emotional part is straightforward. You don't need to be intellectual or political to be moved by what you see. Innocent peoples' lives were lost, many of them children. The child mortality rate was much higher than 9/11.

If it leaves you thinking and reflecting on values like freedom, safety, and justice, which we take for granted, then you'll know that Air India 182 has worked its magic on you. So far it has done so for most of the Canadian media and critics.