LOC
What is wrong with every reviewer? Why does not even
one of them have the guts to stand up and say the
actual truth? LOC is a below average movie and with
all the hype surrounding it, a complete
disappointment. The brave soldiers who laid their
lives for the country and for whom this movie was
supposed to be a tribute are reduced to absolute
caricatures by J. P. Dutta with sufficient help from
his overbloated, incompetent cast. Including inept
actors like Karan Nath, Himanshu Malik, Puru Raj Kumar
(letting him depict a soldier after what he did in
1993 is a sin on Mr. Dutta's part), Amar Upadhyay,
Bikram Saluja etc. is certainly not my idea of trying
to make a great movie. There is not a single moment in
this movie which makes you feel really proud of our
soldiers. All Mr. Dutta really achieves is giving
every member of his humongous cast some footage and in
the process completely destroys the excellent subject
matter he had at his disposal.
Yes, it is true that every character portrayed in the
movie played an important part in India's victory in
the war, but showing one character die every 5 minutes
with the same “Oh mom, oh, mom", "Oh wife. oh wife",
"Oh girlfriend oh girlfriend" dialogues is ridiculous.
And what is even more ridiculous is that every time
one of the "heroes" is shot, even though five men have
already rushed to his aid and have seen the wound, he
still has to give them the mandatory explanation - "I
have been shot". Also, every time an offer is made to
carry a wounded "hero" down to the base camp, each one
of them comes up with the same dialogue – "No, that
would waste 6-8 men, we can't afford that". Yes, I
agree that this is what might have happened in real
life, but in a movie, these dialogues being repeated
10-15 times just bore the hell out of you and make the
sacrifices of the characters seem so trivial. The
introduction of every new character will be given
through another officer commenting "Oh my god, aap
itne bahadur ho, aapko dar nahin lagta?"...it is as if
every soldier other than the main characters is a
cowardly idiot. Introduction of the wives,
girlfriends, mothers etc. etc. is overly long,
completely cliched and very boring. Tell me this - why
do the wives and girlfriends have to be in
stereotypically precise makeup all the time? Also,
when the soldiers are talking to them, it is as if
they are in a Karan Johar movie, and not in Kargil.
There is not even a hint of any effort having been put
into the narrative. It is completely disjointed and
incoherent. In spite of the powerful material, the
script is loose and amateurish. Whenever interest and
emotion are just about to be generated, discontinuity
brings you back to square one. The level of idiocy is
so high that the director actually devotes 30-45
minutes in the second half (yes, the second, not the
first) to remind us of all the wives, girlfriends etc.
The action is so repetitive it becomes boring and
tiresome by the time the main action in the climax
happens. The dialogues are crap. The effort to give
every hero their share of the usual anti-Pakistan and
"I'm brave...yes, I'm brave...oh I'm so brave"
dialogues results in nothing but ludicrousness. Oh,
and yes, there are also the typically stupid
national-integration dialogues here and there. And
whatever is left for the dialogues is made up by the
grotesque and imbecilic slew of obscenities (which is
probably Mr. Dutta's idea of bold realism) and
regiment slogans every other second. The speeches
given by the commanding officers before each major
battle are wishy-washy and generate no emotion
whatsoever (compare this to Sunny Deol's speech before
the main battle in Border which brought everyone to
their feet, cheering and clapping). The Pakistani
soldiers are shown to be a bunch of complete retards
throughout the movie (as usual) and yet, at the end,
Akshaye Khanna manages to put in one line on how
bravely they fought...inanity reigns supreme.
If all this was not enough, here are some glaring
glitches. Night turns into day and back into night
from one scene to another. Bayonets bend when thrust
into bodies, thereby informing the viewers that they
are made of rubber. And even when they do not bend, so
many of them are thrust without drawing even a dop of
blood. Saif Ali Khan is called Capt. Nayar instead of
Capt. Nayyar at quite a few places (where is that
extensive research that we have been hearing about for
the past 6 months, Mr. Dutta?). And the same Saif
blinks after he has dies.
Is there anything good in the movie? Yes...the duo of
Ashutosh Rana and Manoj Bajpai. Perfect casting...
their camaraderie is the only truly entertaining part
of the movie. Ajay Devgan, Abhishek Bachchan, Akshaye
Khanna and Saif Ali Khan are ok too. Also, J. P. Dutta
has managed to get his hands on some very good
resources. He is able to include actual shots of IAF
helicopters and the Bofors guns which give some amount
(however small it may be) of credibility to the movie
(but the excessive mention of how good the Bofors gun
is does get on your nerves). And most of the
cinematography is good.
Final word: LOC is four hours of excessive boredom, a
shoddy piece of cinema, an insipid, sluggish and very
very mediocre movie that instead of being a tribute to
our soldiers, ends up as a grave injustice to them.
Avoid this one. Watch Border (even if for the nth
time) instead.
one of them have the guts to stand up and say the
actual truth? LOC is a below average movie and with
all the hype surrounding it, a complete
disappointment. The brave soldiers who laid their
lives for the country and for whom this movie was
supposed to be a tribute are reduced to absolute
caricatures by J. P. Dutta with sufficient help from
his overbloated, incompetent cast. Including inept
actors like Karan Nath, Himanshu Malik, Puru Raj Kumar
(letting him depict a soldier after what he did in
1993 is a sin on Mr. Dutta's part), Amar Upadhyay,
Bikram Saluja etc. is certainly not my idea of trying
to make a great movie. There is not a single moment in
this movie which makes you feel really proud of our
soldiers. All Mr. Dutta really achieves is giving
every member of his humongous cast some footage and in
the process completely destroys the excellent subject
matter he had at his disposal.
Yes, it is true that every character portrayed in the
movie played an important part in India's victory in
the war, but showing one character die every 5 minutes
with the same “Oh mom, oh, mom", "Oh wife. oh wife",
"Oh girlfriend oh girlfriend" dialogues is ridiculous.
And what is even more ridiculous is that every time
one of the "heroes" is shot, even though five men have
already rushed to his aid and have seen the wound, he
still has to give them the mandatory explanation - "I
have been shot". Also, every time an offer is made to
carry a wounded "hero" down to the base camp, each one
of them comes up with the same dialogue – "No, that
would waste 6-8 men, we can't afford that". Yes, I
agree that this is what might have happened in real
life, but in a movie, these dialogues being repeated
10-15 times just bore the hell out of you and make the
sacrifices of the characters seem so trivial. The
introduction of every new character will be given
through another officer commenting "Oh my god, aap
itne bahadur ho, aapko dar nahin lagta?"...it is as if
every soldier other than the main characters is a
cowardly idiot. Introduction of the wives,
girlfriends, mothers etc. etc. is overly long,
completely cliched and very boring. Tell me this - why
do the wives and girlfriends have to be in
stereotypically precise makeup all the time? Also,
when the soldiers are talking to them, it is as if
they are in a Karan Johar movie, and not in Kargil.
There is not even a hint of any effort having been put
into the narrative. It is completely disjointed and
incoherent. In spite of the powerful material, the
script is loose and amateurish. Whenever interest and
emotion are just about to be generated, discontinuity
brings you back to square one. The level of idiocy is
so high that the director actually devotes 30-45
minutes in the second half (yes, the second, not the
first) to remind us of all the wives, girlfriends etc.
The action is so repetitive it becomes boring and
tiresome by the time the main action in the climax
happens. The dialogues are crap. The effort to give
every hero their share of the usual anti-Pakistan and
"I'm brave...yes, I'm brave...oh I'm so brave"
dialogues results in nothing but ludicrousness. Oh,
and yes, there are also the typically stupid
national-integration dialogues here and there. And
whatever is left for the dialogues is made up by the
grotesque and imbecilic slew of obscenities (which is
probably Mr. Dutta's idea of bold realism) and
regiment slogans every other second. The speeches
given by the commanding officers before each major
battle are wishy-washy and generate no emotion
whatsoever (compare this to Sunny Deol's speech before
the main battle in Border which brought everyone to
their feet, cheering and clapping). The Pakistani
soldiers are shown to be a bunch of complete retards
throughout the movie (as usual) and yet, at the end,
Akshaye Khanna manages to put in one line on how
bravely they fought...inanity reigns supreme.
If all this was not enough, here are some glaring
glitches. Night turns into day and back into night
from one scene to another. Bayonets bend when thrust
into bodies, thereby informing the viewers that they
are made of rubber. And even when they do not bend, so
many of them are thrust without drawing even a dop of
blood. Saif Ali Khan is called Capt. Nayar instead of
Capt. Nayyar at quite a few places (where is that
extensive research that we have been hearing about for
the past 6 months, Mr. Dutta?). And the same Saif
blinks after he has dies.
Is there anything good in the movie? Yes...the duo of
Ashutosh Rana and Manoj Bajpai. Perfect casting...
their camaraderie is the only truly entertaining part
of the movie. Ajay Devgan, Abhishek Bachchan, Akshaye
Khanna and Saif Ali Khan are ok too. Also, J. P. Dutta
has managed to get his hands on some very good
resources. He is able to include actual shots of IAF
helicopters and the Bofors guns which give some amount
(however small it may be) of credibility to the movie
(but the excessive mention of how good the Bofors gun
is does get on your nerves). And most of the
cinematography is good.
Final word: LOC is four hours of excessive boredom, a
shoddy piece of cinema, an insipid, sluggish and very
very mediocre movie that instead of being a tribute to
our soldiers, ends up as a grave injustice to them.
Avoid this one. Watch Border (even if for the nth
time) instead.
posted by Vipul at
2:18 PM
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