The Attacks of 26/11
The Attacks of 26/11
Release date: March 1, 2013
Directed by: Ram Gopal Varma
Cast: Nana Patekar, Sanjeev Jaiswal, Atul Kulkarni
Ram Gopal Varma’s latest brave venture is a pseudo-documentary that viciously depicts the unfortunate terrorist siege in Mumbai on November 26, 2008. The film takes a structure that narrates the events as they happened by a higher ranked police official in front of a one dimensional audience.
Nana Patekar plays the ‘Joint Commissioner of Police’ who’s offering an unclear explanation for the delayed course of action by the unequipped Mumbai Police during the attacks to an inactive, motionless and indifferent jury of extras. There is no reaction, no questions, and absolutely no interaction between them, it’s just Nana Patekar going on a monologue that chronicles limited details of the incident.
The makers decide to opt out of showing the entire duration of the 4 day long ordeal. They start with an unnecessarily drawn out portion of the ten armed men’s journey and arrival through the sea. There are innumerable different camera angles in the boat, Leopold cafe and EVERYWHERE ELSE. On closer inspection, there’s nothing more to highlight than the same ‘innumerable camera angles’.
The Attacks of 26/11 has absolutely no story to tell, except for the amateurish caricaturist approach at establishing any sort of characters. The dialogue is laced with done-to-death and boorish moralistic and religious lines. There’s nothing to learn from this yet-another-dramatic-reconstruction. The film offers no new perspective on anything between the terrorists’ ideology or the helplessness of local cops.
For the major part of it, the film tries a dramatic and somewhat documentary-like approach. Once Ajmal Kasab (Sanjeev Jaiswal) is captured, the entire realistic style is thrown out of the window, rather flushed down the nearest toilet. Kasab’s character starts with a husky-cum-aggressive undertone to his voice, attempting to portray him much like a psychopathic killer, thereby taking the vague social message imparting method where the protagonist and antagonist go on a verbal tirade with a forced usage of a few cuss words.
Varma and his primary writing associate Rommel Rodrigues try the much guaranteed flash in the pan outlook (refer A Wednesday) at the entire episode and leave you with a confused and erratic product. Is RGV’s legacy redeemed? Not by a long shot yet.
My rating: *1/2 (1.5 out of 5)
Blast A Trumpet 
I am totally disagree by these words, The film is based on Real Story, and RGV just have tried to show the Real incident and He is successful in this. The film is letting people know What happened that day, Not trying to teach What should we do. We shouldn’t expect to get something moral content, Morality in our own side.
I don’t want a moral lesson from the film, I want the film to tell me a clear story at the very least.
Everyone knows what happened on that day, and if anyone wants education on the events that transpired on 26/11 should just google for the infinite number of documentaries made on the attacks.