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Director's special
Chief (Danny Denzongpa) discusses security matters.
16 December (HINDI)
Cast: Milind Soman, Dipannita Sharma, Danny Denzongpa, Gulshan Grover
Music: Karthik Raja
Dir: Mani Shankar
IT IS not the kind of film the masses would watch just for a lark. It is not even a film the cinemagoers would happily queue up for. Nor is it the average patriotic film churned out by Hindi cinema. And, therein lies its USP. It is a patriotic film in its own right but there are no jingoistic dialogues, which seem to be a regular feature of a Bollywood offering these days. It also does not have a one-man army taking on entire battalions, like we have seen in countless Sunny Deol films. Instead, the film, dealing with Pakistan's surrender at Dhaka in 1971, is actually a superb spy and camera-in-peephole drama that keeps you glued to your seat.
Without a major box office draw, 16 December marks the coming to fore of alternate cinema within the mainstream.
The subject is strictly mainstream, but the handling is refreshingly different. The snooping camera angles, the silhouettes, the dim tones all add to the eerie feeling that someone somewhere is going to give in.
In its own way, it brings back the Tehelka way of operations. Hence, we have a four-member intelligence team walking around with tiny camera attached to their watch, their button and their carry-bag, and capturing the photos of white-collar criminals ready to sell off the country for a few hundred crores.
It is during one such snooping exercise that the always on-the-move brigade lands its hands on a politician with astronomical assets in a EuroSwiss Bank.
When his money gets transferred to an international terrorist agency he conks off. And the organisation wants to avenge the humiliating loss in 1971.
It all boils down to a nuclear bomb being smuggled into India's capital via a number of terrorists for the fatal explosion. And nipped in the nick of time operation.
16 December, deriving its name from the day Lt. Gen. Niazi surrendered to Lt. Gen. Jagjit Singh Aurora, is only a work of fiction but borders very close to reality. The names of the terrorists, the leaders and everything are almost parallel to real life.
With Danny Denzongpa and Gulshan Grover, the only veterans, debutant director Mani Shankar still manages to get good performances from his cast, including Milind Soman, making a comeback long after Tarkieb failed to work.
It is basically a director's film in which Mani is able to hold the viewers' attention almost all through, barring two songs thrown in the second half - the first half does not have a song - as a concession to frontbenchers.
Superbly crafted, excellently cinematographed, it is tautly edited. And may just mark the coming of better technology to Bollywood.
ZIYA US SALAM
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