Paltan Movie Review: JP Dutta tries to recreate Border, BUT clearly fails the mark

What memories do we have of war films? JP Dutta’s magnificent Border and LOC: Kargil are the ones that hit our mind. Well, Paltan is also directed by him and is the third film in the war trilogy series that he promised to make. If you are expecting the same magic as his earlier films, then this one doesn’t fit the bill in any way. As we had earlier told in our mid-movie review, the film is bland with loosely stitched fragments - we keep the same stance even after watching the entire film. Paltan lacks that seriousness in terms of showing one of the most important events of history - the Indo-China war in 1962 and 1967. The film begins with explaining the meaning of the word - Paltan. For those who don’t know the exact meaning of it, don't worry, just like a revision class in your school, you will be forced to remember it all through the movie. In the end, you would forget the number of times the filmmaker has inserted the word Paltan in the script. 

The director brings together an ensemble cast featuring Jackie Shroff, Arjun Rampal, Sonu Sood, Harshvardhan Rane, Gurmeet Choudhary and Luv Sinha. Talking about the female actor, Esha Gupta, Sonal Chauhan, Dipika Kakar and Monica Gill, they literally add nothing to the script but are just mere tools to add the emotional aspect in the movie (which doesn’t really leave an impact). 

Paltan is filled with some really out-of-the-box phrases, all courtesy to the dialogue writer of the film. One such example is - ‘Brother on my right, brother on my left; if we don’t stand united, we lose the fight’. Yes, this was one of the dialogues in the film. There are some more like - ‘The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war’. Well, we just kept wondering if this is how our soldiers talk on the war front (surely not). 

One more funny aspect to the film is that all Indian soldiers have ripped and chiselled bodies but Chinese army men lack in the department of looks. Sigh! There are several instances that make no sense in the film - like that of throwing stones at each other’s army men (yes, that legit happened). Somewhere you will feel like it’s a miserable attempt at recreating Border. 

No offence to the actors in the movie but it is Harshvardhan Rane who stands out as Major Harbhajan Singh. Gurmeet did try hard but has overdone in many places. Jackie, Rampal and Sood were the three high-in-command and have done a decent job in putting up their parts. Siddhant Kapoor plays the role of Chinese translator and well, we have nothing more to add about his character. 

In the last, JP Dutta used the emotional weapon to save his flight to crash land. You see how the other soldiers give tribute to the ‘Shaheeds’. 

To sum up, we would want to say that JP Dutta is clearly stuck in 90s and has failed to recreate Border. 

We give it 40% on our Pinkvilla Meter.