LOC Kargil
This film is an insult to our martyrs

 J.P. Dutta touches rock bottom as a filmmaker in his latest offering. The fall that started with Border, culminates with LOC Kargil.

This film will be the biggest flop of the year. It deserves this fate.

This reviewer is surprised at the positive reaction of some army personnel to the film. They are probably being polite or may be Indian army has among its officers and Jawans a bunch of idiots who consider mindless bravado as an example of courage.

LOC Kargil shows army officers and Jawans in poor light. It makes them look like fools who lost their lives by charging at blazing LMGs being fired by the enemy from well fortified bunkers. It is a carelessly made war film, which is badly written, shot, directed, and acted. It is boring. It demeans our heroes as poor soldiers, who kick at dead enemies, and get killed by their own foolishness. In the name of reality, J.P. Dutta fires at us a barrage of expletives. In fact the most effective, and oft repeated dialogues in the film are 'Madharchod', 'Behanchod', 'Teri Ma Ki...', 'Bastards', and 'Oh Shit'.

After watching this film the people of this country would have the following views about the Kargil war.
 

• It was a war fought by love sick army officers and Jawans.
• Our army officers and Jawans were more concerned about sending the dead bodies of their colleagues back home rather than achieving the objectives of the battle. In fact almost 75% of dialogues in the film either consist of expletives or discussions about carrying the injured or dead Jawan down on a stretcher. Every time a soldier or officer is hit, the commanding officer forgets about the battle on hand and gets down to consoling him or starts crying over his dead body. Next, they begin an argument about the evacuation of dead and injured colleagues. The suffering colleague invariably refuses to be evacuated as it may deplete the strength of the platoon as eight soldiers will be needed for the job. This theme is repeated so often that it gets ridiculous and funny after a while.
• Our officers and Jawans did not even have binoculars to locate the enemy positions.
• Our Air Force did nothing during the Kargil war but to ferry the soldiers in its transport planes and helicopters.
• Our NDA trained officers have the penchant to run directly into heavy enemy fire and die in the process. This is not 'Veergati', it is 'Murkhgati'.
• Our soldiers and officers had a ball. They had satellite phones on Kargil heights and they used it to have last minute chats with their girl friends.
• Bofors was the most important reason for our victory in Kargil.
• Indian army was fighting a bunch of jokers and they succeeded because they had overwhelming numerical superiority over their enemies and of course they had Bofors. (This may be true)
• Our troops did not plan their attacks. They were always attacked while taking rest and they acted like mad bulls after that.

Only an illiterate, ill-informed, and unimaginative idiot can write an insipid script like LOC. The filmmaker who goes ahead and produces and shoots the script must be a lunatic. The actors who act in such films are buffoons. Those who write praises of the film are real M#*#*#*#.

Thankfully, the audiences have become wiser. They cannot be taken for such easy rides any more.

Even in technical terms the film comes out to be a cropper. Shot divisions are bad. The film rarely captures the drama and excitement of war theater. Actors have performed badly. You cannot blame them though. The script hardly offers them any scope to do much. The director has not worked on them either. How could he have done it? He did not know what he wanted to do. Half of the film is spent in introducing an unwieldy bunch of minor and major stars and their girl friends and wives in the most predictable manner. We were always told of the harsh terrain and weather our troops had to encounter in Kargil war. Nothing of that is seen here in this film. It looks like a film of a war game played by kids in school picnics. These games are played with greater ingenuity though. You can be certain that kids will not be running in front of blazing machine guns of the opponent in the game. However, if the kids are allowed to watch LOC Kargil, they may get inspired by the colorful language used by the characters of LOC and would have plenty of expletives to use as their war cries.  Gali gali aur gaon gaon mein bachhe sab ki 'Ma Behan' kar ke rakh denge. Since the film will not do well, this thing may not be widespread.

 
 

This reviewer has a feeling that Dutta never intended to make a great war film. His eyes were set at making money alone. He wanted to exploit the Kargil war. He used the name of Kargil and his own to assemble a huge star cast for peanuts, thinking of his film's saleability. He must have got the money from distributors in advance. He did not bother about the script and the story. He knew he had the great Indian war film 'Haqiqat' for quick and easy inspiration. His father and he would have known all along that they were going to make a rehash of the classic. They had done it in Border and it had worked somehow.Dutta lies if he says his film is based on research. Even if the research was done, it brought out nothing but some names of the martyrs and the army regiments involved in that war. It also would have discovered the great truth that our soldiers are very good at word fucking of enemy's mothers and sisters. Another VERY VERY important finding of the research must have been that eight people are needed to carry a dead or injured soldier downhill. There was yet another gem of a discovery. The Army's respect and concern for our dead soldiers was so great that coffins were carried to the heights of Kargil and most of the times our troops were packing and carrying these dead and injured bodies around. The usage of satellite phones was the next very important finding of the research. All these important findings had to be incorporated into the film. They were so crucial to the war after all. Is it not true Mr. Dutta?

The role of the Air Force in the war had to be ignored. It would have really cost money, required imagination, and some genuine directorial effort to envision and shoot those sequences. LOC Kargil is not an expensive film in production terms. We do not see a huge theater of war in the film. Dutta does not even try to recreate the major events of the war carefully. He has stock scenes. All of them seem to have been shot in a few locations. You can count these scenes on your fingers. There are hardly 12 scenes that get repeated time and again to make a 240 minutes film. There are two long songs. Both use the same stock visuals. Producers and directors of 'Janasheen', and 'Market' had put in greater efforts and money in their films. One cannot blame Dutta's laziness for the LOC disaster. He was after money and money alone and all this talk of paying homage to Kargil martyrs is pure bull shit. He does not care for them. He is neither a committed filmmaker nor a true patriot. He is a businessman who offers spurious stuff in a shiny bottle. He is not bothered if the customer will return to his shop or not.
 

Suppose this analogy about J.P. Dutta's intentions is wrong and he was really very serious about making a war epic?

Then the other analogy that could be drawn from LOC experiment is that J.P. Dutta is a stupid director, probably as stupid as the guy who directs an insipid, third rated TV serial called Mission Fateh for Sahara TV.

Both of them demean the great Indian army by their ridiculous portrayals and we hardly hear a voice of protest on something as blasphemous as this.