This week last year, a film released that seemed to epitomise popular Hindi cinema’s decline over a decade. Fighter might have set out to cash in on the success of Top Gun: Maverick, but it played like an advertisement for the sitting government at the centre. Releasing months before the general elections, the film—like Uri: The Surgical Strike in 2019—showed the prime minister as capable commander in chief while engaging in hysterical Pakistan-baiting. “Unhe dikhaana padega ki baap kaun hai (we’ll show them who daddy is),” the PM in the film says, a statesman-like sentiment befitting a Republic Day release.
Sky Force also takes a ‘baap’ jab at Pakistan, but it’s a half-hearted swipe. As a fighter pilot film releasing on the weekend of 26 January, there are certain jingoistic beats directors Sandeep Kewlani and Abhishek Anil Kapur must feel they have to hit. And they do, but their heart isn’t in it. On the face of it, there’s not much to recommend this film—it's underwritten, square and tries to pull off elaborate action on a clearly insufficient budget. But where Fighter tends towards rabid nationalism, Sky Force stumbles awkwardly in search of reconciliation.
In 1965, with war looking increasingly likely, Wing Commander Ahuja (Akshay Kumar)—flight sign ‘Tiger’—is tasked with training a squadron of elite fighter pilots. As per genre rules, the most skilled one is a loose cannon: T. Vijaya (Veer Pahariya), flight sign ‘Tabby’. Unlike Maverick (and Fighter), Tabby and Tiger aren’t antagonistic; the younger pilot idolises the older one, while Vijaya reminds Ahuja of his dead brother. He becomes a kind of brother by extension, with Ahuja promising Vijaya’s pregnant wife, Geeta (Sara Ali Khan), to keep him safe.
Both Ahuja and Vijaya are based on real-life pilots, and what happens in the film is mostly historical record. After leading a successful attack on a Pakistani base (‘ghar mein ghus ke maarenge’ is said for the 347th time in 6 years), Ahuja returns home, only to learn that Vijaya, whom he placed on stand-by, has disobeyed orders and taken off in his plane towards the border. He never returns. In the aftermath of victory, none of Ahuja’s superiors are interested in looking into the whereabout of a rebellious pilot who’s probably dead. But Ahuja can’t move on.
It’s here that Sky Force plays its one good hand (again drawn from real life). Ahmed Hussain (Sharad Kelkar), a Pakistani pilot, is shot down and captured in ’71. It falls to Ahuja to interrogate him, and though Hussain is cagey, there’s a suggestion that he may have seen Vijaya on that fateful sortie. Hussain is that rarity in Hindi cinema—a Pakistani military man who’s every bit as honourable and skilful as his Indian counterparts. Kelkar plays him with great dignity; his wary growing rapport with Kumar is the best thing in the film.
Much of Sky Force is taken up by aerial action—training exercises, recces, raids, dogfights. It’s a gamble for a film that isn’t mounted on a lavish scale. Some kinds of action are simply tougher to achieve on a budget, and the CGI here makes the film look tacky and cheap. Kapur and Kewlani exacerbate the problem by overdoing the fancy stuff. There’s only so many times you can see a pilot do a 180-degree roll mid-combat without it looking fake. Finally, the sound mix is terrible. Between the flight masks, the ambient noise and Justin Varghese’s overeager score, I could barely make out a word the pilots were saying.
There’s a quartet of writers—Kelwani, Carl Austin, Niren Bhatt and Aamil Keeyan Khan—but a lot of the ideas are generic and the dialogue wooden (there were giggles in my screening when Kumar says “Be quiet, Tabby” during a dramatic scene). Everything is explained, then reiterated—we hear ‘no man left behind’ half a dozen times. “We want peace and they want Kashmir” is the kind of easy punchline that doesn’t befit a film that seems to want to go in a different direction, with the last half-hour taken up by trips, talks and memories.
There’s a lot of sermonizing about military values, par for the course in Indian cinema, where the armed forces are heavily involved in facilitating and passing films about themselves. The small subversion of Sky Force, though, is that everyone but Ahuja is fine with leaving their man behind. And it’s a Pakistani whose intervention provides a sliver of hope. Sky Force is far from a good film. But it has a good idea and runs with it.
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