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Movie review: Can Akshay Kumar save the day?
Gulf News
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2/17/2025
Bollywood movie review of Mission Raniganj starring Akshay Kumar and Parineeti Chopra
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00:00
And truth be told, we're slightly tired of seeing Akshay Kumar in this saviour kind of
00:04
roles. I mean, off late, he's been adopting roles which show him as this superhero with a cape,
00:10
these real-life missions that showcase a particular country in great light, etc.
00:20
Good evening, everyone. This is Manjusha Radhakrishnan from Gulf News. I'm the
00:24
entertainment editor. And this morning in the UAE cinemas, I caught up with Akshay Kumar's
00:29
new movie called Mission Rani Ganj. The stakes are very high in this movie based on a real-life
00:35
mission. This happened in 1989 in West Bengal, where 65 miners were rescued from underground
00:43
when their shaft flooded, and we didn't know whether they would make it alive or not.
00:48
This movie boasts a raft of talents like Anant Mahadevan, Kumud Mishra, Ravi Kishan, etc. They
00:54
are all talented in their own right. But what we have in this movie is some over-the-top acting.
00:59
It almost looks like the collective brief given to all the actors is to be over-the-top,
01:04
loud and flamboyant. See, this is a very grim issue. I mean, we are talking about people's
01:09
lives. We are talking about how these poor miners are trapped, not knowing whether they will
01:15
actually see their family ever again. But everything is done in a very deliberately
01:20
loud manner and bombastic manner. It does not work for this movie. I think this film would
01:25
have benefited a lot from no-frills kind of docu-series kind of manner, rather than treating
01:31
it the typical Bollywood style. I mean, the movie opens with Akshay Kumar's character,
01:38
Jaswant Gill, who is a very stoic officer, cares for the lives of miners, knows what he is doing,
01:44
break out into a song serenading his wife, played by Parineeti Chopra. Their lives are at stake and
01:50
it's up to Jaswant Gill, played by Akshay Kumar as this valiant superhero, to come to their rescue.
01:56
What I like about this movie is that Akshay Kumar, as always, is very, very earnest in his role. He
02:01
gives it his best. But what lets this film down is the over-the-top acting. Now, we are looking
02:07
at families who are devastated, knowing that there is a tragedy waiting to happen in their lives.
02:12
The screeches are real. There's even one scene where one of the family members of the coal miners
02:18
trapped inside, they come ahead and just slap Akshay Kumar's character. Something tells me that
02:22
this movie did not benefit from the Bollywood style treatment at all. The song and dance in
02:28
the beginning, where Jaswant Singh Gill is introduced to us as this stoic family man,
02:33
who takes care of his wife, played by Parineeti Chopra. Recently, she got married as well,
02:38
so there's a lot of interest in her as well, her role. But she does not have much to do,
02:44
and the songs, etc., kind of fracture the narrative. What would have helped tremendously
02:48
is if Tinu Suresh Desai had adopted a more no-frills, docu-series kind of style of filmmaking,
02:55
telling us step by step how did this rescue operation pan out. It's not that Akshay Kumar is
03:00
not good in his role. He is very good in his role, but the problem is he's let down by acting that is
03:05
way over the top. In fact, the slow motions does not help. The Bollywood style treatment of this
03:11
movie does not help as well. In fact, this movie also has some very talented people like Ravi
03:16
Kishan, Kumud Mishra, etc., but they've all been given the collective brief to overact.
03:22
So what we have is a very bombastic feature. Something tells me that the real life Jaswant
03:27
Gill had a lot of gravitas. He had a lot of ethics and scruples, but all of that was lost
03:34
in translation. Another thing that let this movie down is the bad VFX. If you look at the
03:41
scenes where the coal miners are trapped inside and the water flooding, etc., those scenes look
03:47
impossibly staged. All in all, this movie, had it been treated with a more sensitive hand, perhaps
03:54
a subtle way of acting, subtle way of, you know, letting the narrative take its course, it would
04:00
have been such a better movie. There's no denying that there was a lot of promise in this film.
04:06
The villains in this movie are also impossibly caricaturish and tinny. Look at the example of
04:12
Divendu Bhattacharya, who plays this very corrupt officer. He's trying to sabotage Jaswant Gill's
04:18
rescue operations. He just wants more money. He doesn't care about the lives of the miners.
04:24
But everything is done in such an over-the-top manner that you stop feeling for any of these
04:30
characters. In fact, there's also a scene where he's pelted after being tied to a tree. I mean,
04:36
this is a rescue operation happening. Time is of the essence. Where do you have time for such
04:40
melodrama? So this is one of the biggest failures of this film. Go down this tunnel only if you're
04:46
in the mood for some bombastic filmmaking and also to see a larger-than-life Bollywood hero
04:51
trying to save the day with as much subtlety as the drilling machine.
04:56
And truth be told, we're slightly tired of seeing Akshay Kumar in this saviour kind of roles.
05:01
I mean, of late, he's been adopting roles which show him as this superhero with a cape,
05:06
these real-life missions that showcase a particular country in great light, etc.,
05:11
or show him as this great patriot. Perhaps what would benefit is to mix things up a bit.
05:17
I've gone with 2 out of 5 stars. For my full review, go to gulfnews.com.
Recommended
5:58
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