1971: Beyond Borders

The movie starts with Indian Army lead by Major Mahadevan (Mohanlal) helping Pakistan Army from the terrorist attack on the same day India celebrating victory above Pakistan. Pakistan Army comes to the celebration of Indian Army after Major Mahadevan invited them. All of sudden, both Army leaders find out that their fathers were related in the previous war and the story has started of previous war.

Mohanlal's dialogue deliveries and inspiration speeches are good. Even Ashutosh Rana has done a great work in a Malayalam movie. But, most of the war scenes shows that Mohanlal has become old to do a war movie. Even history repeats when Major Sahadevn's favorite Lieutenant Chinmay (Allu Sirish) died same as Major Mahadevan's favorite Havildar Jaykumar (Jiva) died in Keerthi Chakra.

This movie was not up to the mark compared to the director Major Ravi's previous Army movies and viewers need to think themselves whether they understood the message of the movie (Pakistanis are not a enemies and nobody want WAR).

Yhe wasn't India Pakistan war. It was Bangladesh and Pakistan war. India helped Bangladesh at some point. Only

The movie begins with colonel Mahadevan commanding a UN mission. The mission scenes were short and the focus soon shifted to retired major Sahadevan. The film shifts to a flash back to the 1971 period. By the way Mohanlal has got really fat. But that didn't stop the versatile actor from pumping patriotism into our veins. However the plot wasn't interesting enough to keep you on your edges. The movie begins to lag after a point making it boring to watch. An unnecessary song sequence just added to the boredom. It was only until the tank scene, things started to get interesting again. The movie in a whole wasn't convincing enough regarding various emotional scenes. There was an attempt to recreate Jeeva's character in Keerthichakra but again wasn't convincing enough. The entire film tries to tell us why Sahadevan was impressed by the valor of Colonel Raja but as the viewers we just couldn't feel it. Frankly speaking Picket 43 and Keerthichakra could kick this movie out of the park.

I have to admit I had decided I am not going to like this movie before I watched it. After watching the movie promotions, trailers and interviews, I kind of gathered that there is no substance in the movie. Only thing that stands out about Major Ravi is his devotion for Mohanlal. Spot reviews from theaters (obviously by Mohanlal fans associations) sounded dubious. Most media reviews sounded rigged too. Despite all that I decided to give it my 2 hours.

When I saw a group of Indian soldiers led by Mohanlal jumped out of a military convoy holding machine guns and aimlessly scattering about with no skills and no practice, I knew this movie is not for me. I lasted for about 10 minutes after that. I had to walk out of the fiasco.

Similar to how internal trading is illegal in stock market, padded reviews by fans associations should be made illegal.

If you look at Major Ravi's filmography, it is clear what his intentions are. However, none of his films are cinematically strong. They are like used bullet shells that have no use but are there to remind us about wars. This war drama is no different.

Sahadevan (Mohanlal) is a Major in the Indian army who speaks awful Hindi and English, and leads a team of largely Malayali soldiers at the border. It's 1971, and India is sporadically at war with East or West Pakistan (it's unclear). Although Sahadevan has a family back home, he is dedicated at his work and on the task at hand, which is to kill as many enemies as possible in the battlefield. With insubordination, arrogance, constant thirst for alcohol, and a large belly that prevents free movement of his body as weapons, he leads his battalion against a faction of Pakistani soldiers headed by Commander Akram Raja (Arunoday Singh), who (no prize for guessing) also has a family back home.

The narrative has no idea what it's doing because at one point, we see a soldier being sent to help a father grieve his father's loss and at another, we see Sahadevan reprimanding a young soldier for exchanging risqué pornographic love letters with his newly-wedded wife. To say the least, everything is all over the place. It looks like Director Ravi gathered all typical war elements in his hand, put it in a Preethi mixer grinder, and blended it till the time he was satisfied and was able to cook up a pretentious and pathetic story to decorate the blended mixture with. I'm not sure if the guarantee provided by Preethi was enough, because the final dish looks stale, smells ghastly, and tastes like human viscera. Throughout the film, the Indian soldiers are running and walking around the field in groups like they are in a treasure hunt. Just plain awful!

There's not a single good point to talk about 1971: Beyond Borders except Arunoday Singh's below average performance as a moral army man. Whatever the makers intended by creating such an ambitious yet floppy film is beyond me, because neither the technical aspects nor the writing is proper here. Mohanlal is a phenomenal actor but seeing him blurt out nonsense and play with a tank in a war field is excruciatingly painful. His character is a self-righteous pig who ogles at young married women when not at the war-front. While the supporting cast also disappoint with their unpolished performance, it is untalented Allu Sirish who becomes another pain in the neck portraying a soldier like he's a floozy.

Director Ravi is an awful director, and this film proves it once again. His intentions as a former army man may be novel, but it's a kind request from a serious cinema-watcher that he stop making us - the general, informed audience - put up with such ludicrous war films. I'm not even going to talk about those songs that are part of this 130-minute madness.

BOTTOM LINE: Major Ravi's "1971: Beyond Borders" is not a war film, but instead a mockery of war, picturised using painted characters that do not know anything about war just like the people who made the film. It is cringe-worthy, melodramatic, and purely imaginative. Skip for life!

Can be watched with a typical Indian family? YES