Sam Bahadur

Though Fatima Sana Sheikh’s performance is uneven, the film efficiently captures the chemistry between the feisty but insecure Indira Gandhi and a resolute Sam (Vicky Kaushal). The scene where the former Secretary of State of the United States Henry Kissinger is shown his place by Indira and Sam and the Americans’ propensity to poke into others’ matters is called out makes great viewing. In the week, when the controversial American statesman has passed away, the film comes as a timely reminder of Kissinger’s rare failure in secret diplomacy. The film also painfully reminds how the colonial power divided the best of gentlemen cadets based on religion. It gives goosebumps to know that there was a time when Yahya Khan (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) is impressive with and without prosthetics) rode pillion with Sam but years later they locked horns in East Pakistan.

Sam Bahadur can be seen as sweet and engaging in the individual segments of Manekshaw’s life that together form the film’s plot. They are shot, designed and acted very well (props to cinematographer Jay I Patel’s work on the air strikes and combat scenes in Burma) and might just make it worth watching this larger-than-life vignette reel in the theatres. But the strands that tie them together, such as Manekshaw’s banter with his radio set-carrying cook, the leading man and his lady’s ballroom meet-cute — or the sequence where he is seen making the wildly popular declaration about gurkhas and fear, feel disjointed and in desperate need to be cut some slack on account of the film’s largely sanguine tone.

The film takes a rather rushed journey from the 1930s-70s that fails to allow the audience to savour what the biographical war drama has to offer. The time stamps and increasing gray hairs on Sam’s moustache are the only cues to let us know the passage of time. And yet, there are plenty of empty strands that the film builds around Sam. Take, for instance, his growing friendship with Yahya Khan, who was also a Major during the British rule. But as the Partition takes place and one party is hurt, Sam Bahadur seldom tries to bring this track on, until the final act where the conclusion isn’t very satisfying either.

Net net, ‘Sam Bahadur’ pans out like a series of snapshots where information is handed out to us, much more tell than show. The writing is flat even when it tries to amp up the excitement in scenes which are inherently exciting. Take, for example, a running thread which features an irascible factotum who has clearly endeared himself to the big man. The first time we see the former twiddle the knob on his beat-up radio, muttering under his breath, we are amused. A repetition in the same vein is just not as funny. Kaushal, though, won me over by being spot on, eyes a-twinkle, moustache a-bristle. It’s hard to play a character so closely without becoming a caricature, but he becomes Sam Bahadur.

Meghna Gulzar's biopic Sam Bahadur offers a straightforward portrait of the Indian military's most famous commander. There's no question that it's a meticulously researched and detailed account of her glorious subject's triumphs. But it is also disappointingly impersonal in its approach.