Sky Force
Starring Akshay Kumar and introducing Veer Pahariya
Directed by Sandeep Kewlani & Abhishek Kapur
By the time the divine voice of the Singing Goddess Lataji wafts through the soundtrack with the timeless anthem of patriotism ‘Ae mere watan ke logon’, I was sold completely.
In some sequences before that, Sara Ali Khan, playing the semi-widowed wife of an MIA soldier, lovingly watches her little daughter being fed by her husband. It’s a lovely moment of wistful regret.
I craved for more such emotionally plush moments in a film that squanders considerable footage in trying to be the Jalandhar version of Top Gun. Not needed! There is enough edifying heft in the jingoistic cocktail that more than compensates for the amateurish aerobatics.
Akshay Kumar in Sky Force reminded me of his 2016 gem Airlift, the same passion to do good, and I don’t mean just as an actor…Even the same wife, Nimrat Kaur (looking all over-dressed up for a party that never happens).
Akshay is in almost every frame of the film. This has become a trademark for his career in recent years. This is not a bad thing in this case: Akshay,errr, airlifts the plot with his resolute grip over the emotional scenes.
In the garb of a war film, Sky Force is actually a love letter to brotherly bonding over the soldierly code. It takes its time to get to the emotional epicentre. The first half, with its endless aerial shots of Bravehearts swimming in the clouds, is plainly exhausting.
The narrative comes into its own when airforce officer Om Ahuja (Akshay)’s protégé Vijaya, a.k.a Tabby (debutant Veer Pahariya), goes missing in action. Om’s guilt and trauma—he had promised Tabby’s wife he would take care of her husband—is gently welded into the reams of airborne bravado in a film that longs to get its feet on the ground.
The film has some excellent emotional backup, for instance the song ‘Mayee’ artfully and heartfully penned by Manoj Muntashir. But the patriotic product fails to achieve its full potential in the quest of soldierly cliches: heroes walking in slo-mo, dancing drunken during off hours (fifty years ago it was ‘Dil Karda Oh Yaara Dildara’ in Aadmi Aur Insaan, now it is a song called ‘Rang’).
And yes, an admirable effort is made to humanize the enemy from across the border. Sharad Kelkar, as an empathetic Pakistani soldier, struggles to express forbidden emotions.
The end product is well-intended, if not quite pitch-perfectly plotted. There is enough here to make the nation’s collective heart swell with pride.
