‘Airlift’ trailer sets up a high patriotic meter

Spread the love

Mumbai, Jan 2 (IANS) It was a moment of brief touchdown for Akshay Kumar-starrer “Airlift” with the release of the trailer, weaving a story around one man’s mission to evacuate Indians from foreign shores during troubled times along with hints of politics, diplomacy, bureaucracy, love and patriotism.

Bringing an end to the wait of the movie buffs, the trailer of Raja Krishna Menon directorial was released in the virtual world via Twitter on Saturday. And it was all about action, reaction and emotion.

The 48-year-old “Khiladi” Kumar is seen as an influential businessman who has made many enemies owing to his power, and how he decided to save Indians first upon himself and his family. It gives a sneak peek of the time when Iraq invaded Kuwait and Indians had to be evacuated in 1990.

The film also stars Nimrat Kaur and Purab Kohli.

Akshay tweeted: “Proud, happy, excited. Here’s the #AirliftTrailer guys … @AirliftFilm – India’s most heroic mission, a true story”, Nimrat shared “And the wait is over! An unbelievable true story about India for India”.

The trailer reveals a bit about the movie’s plot as it focuses on Akshay’s character planning an escape route. The film is based on true events and hinging on how one man risks his family’s life and his life to do the right thing.

Even the dialogues like “We are Indians first and everything is in standing united”, “No matter how far you go away from your country, one remembers ‘maa’ (country) during hard times” bring in a patriotic feel.

The film will find its way onto the silver screen on the right time just before Republic Day (January 26). It will release on January 22.


Spread the love

1 Comment

  1. Dear readers,

    Airlift distorts history, creates a false Indian hero
    http://www.dailyo.in/politics/airlift-kuwait-iraq-war-vp-akshay-kumar-queen-aaliyah-airport/story/1/8792.html

    Here are the brief facts

    Kuwait fell on August 3, 1990. Within less than a week, Inder Kumar Gujral, our external affairs minister, was in Baghdad, the first foreign leader to reach there. He was cursed globally for embracing Saddam Hussein for the cameras. But he said to us later he had to do it to protect his people whose safety and evacuation Iraq guaranteed. He came to Kuwait, spoke to stranded Indians, took a few back with him in his IAF Il-76 and then organised the biggest airlift in the history of mankind. Our embassy in Baghdad found a bus contractor to move our people to Amman and Jordan had never closed its borders with Iraq. The first airlift took place on August 13, on the tenth day after the invasion and continued for 59 days until the last Indian wanting to return was back. About 10,000 stayed on in Kuwait, feeling safe with the Iraqis who were friendly to India and never consciously hurt an Indian.

    This film, therefore, has zero resemblance to reality except that it steals a real event to build a Sunny Deol-style hyper-patriotic yarn. These are days when vigilantism is popular. The state and the system can do nothing, so a super Indian has to rise and fill in, until, the tricolour is unfurled to notes of Vande Mataram and we all have tears in our eyes.

    Just a footnote: I(Mr.Shekhar Gupta) covered that Gulf War for India Today magazine from beginning until the end, first bombings in Baghdad, Scuds in Israel and finally the liberation of Kuwait. Amman was the base for all outward travel as you could drive to both Baghdad and Jerusalem. We never heard of a character like Katyal. Of course there was Sunny Mathew, popularly known as Toyota Sunny because he had flourishing agencies for the car company, and a cultured gentleman called Mr Vedi who helped the Indian community get its act together and keep the evacuation smooth. In fact, Mr Vedi was brave enough to stay put. My photographer colleague Prashant Panjiar and I were fortunate to find him as we reached Kuwait just after liberation, with debris scattered, skies blackened with oil well fires and hulls of destroyed Iraqi tanks lying all over. He looked after us, fed us, pointed us to an abandoned house we could just break into, like everybody else—fortunately it had a deep freezer filled with food which we gratefully ate from. He told us many stories of the crisis. He and Sunny had been brave, good, rich Indians, but sadly there was no story to even vaguely resemble what we are celebrating these days.

    And one more important aside. VP Singh had just come to power on the Bofors campaign in the 1989 scam season. One of Rajiv Gandhi’s controversial purchases was the Airbus-320 for Indian Airlines. After one crashed in Bangalore, VP Singh grounded all 320s. But once the airlift became necessary, he had no choice but to let the plane be flown again and it proved to be a real workhorse. Finally, no pilots protested and there was no real danger flying to Amman. Queen Aaliyah airport remained open through the war and most international airlines continued their scheduled flights uninterrupted.

    It [the BJP] just knows one way to win election–by communal polarisation, riots and creating religious divide. It has perfected it in the last three decades. So official machinery, its IT team, its online army, everybody is out to blow things out of proportions in states that are going to polls–Assam, West Bengal and later, UP.

    Many of us may have already received daily trolls in our Whatsapp accounts blaming Former PM VP Singh government. But hard reality is only expatriates in Kuwait suffered the most new it. This is another classic example of ‘AIRLIFT’ is being ‘HIJACKED’ to distort history.A truth very few new.But movie makers already made Billions projecting a false hero.
    Jai Hind

Comments are closed.