Border 2
Starring Sunny Deol, Varun Dhawan, Diljit Dosanjh, Ahan Shetty, Mona Singh, Sonam Bajwa, Anya Singh, and Medha Rana
Directed by Anurag Singh
When J P Dutta made the genre-defining Border in 1997, little did he know that 29 years later, the cross-border crisis would only be exacerbated. This spirited spiritual sequel, if one may call it that, is an absolute winner: razor-sharp dialogues, tears and witticisms flowing in a stream of compelling consciousness, characters including the women etched in strokes of veracity, the war scenes spectacular and the interaction among the soldiers and between soldiers and their loved ones so brilliantly constructed, this feels like the best war film since Border and makes the other recent war films feel utterly battle fatigued.
Border 2 is a triumph on every level. The writing (Anurag Singh, Sumit Arora) moves in divergent, often devilishly unforeseen ways, but the scattered strands of storytelling always meets at the crucial intersections to remind us that good writing, like good travel, is all about timing.
This is a film that doesn’t let us feel the weight of its length. Even after sitting open-mouthed, smiling and sobbing sometimes simultaneously, for more than three hours, I wanted more. I wanted to know about the soldiers’ and their family. How do Fateh Singh (Sunny Deol) and his wife Simi (Mona Singh) cope with the death of their only son, after the dust and blood on the battlefront has settled down, when all the blazing guns have quietened down…
Judiciously, Border 2 concentrates more on the soldiers’ family life than the battle itself. When war breaks out, it is captured with flawless fireworks and subdued hijinks. The backstory for every soldier is written vividly and absorbingly.
Indeed, I have not seen cinema achieve a better merger of human drama and battle action than this.
Edited (by Manish More) with not a single superfluous frame to spoil the flow, and with a background score (by John Stewart Eduri) which is aggressive and exhilarating without getting in the way of the storytelling, Border 2 invites us into its soldierly world without overdoing the jingoism.
As expected, Sunny Deol has the most crowd-pleasing lines. He chews on them with arrogant pride, letting the ‘boys’ know who the man of the show is. The ‘boys’ do well for themselves, too. Varun Dhawan and Diljit Dosanjh are the cloud and the sunshine duo. Without cutting into Deol’s supremacy, they bring a whole lot of heft to the proceedings.
Among the female actors, Mona Singh scores a sweeping sentimental sixer. She is part of the best-written sequence in which Deol receives a letter from his dead son. Pause for goosebumps.
Moments that remind us of how precious every moment of life is, even when death awaits at the next street corner, validate the film’s highly persuasive dramatic pitch. Border 2 is one of those films that just makes you feel good to be alive.
