Shershaah is a 2021 Indian Hindi language biographical war film directed by Vishnuvardhan and written by Sandeep Shrivastava, with Hiroo Yash Johar, Karan Johar and Apoorva Mehta of Dharma Productions and Shabbir Boxwala, Ajay Shah and Himanshu Gandhi of Kaash Entertainment jointly serving as producers. Tracing the life journey of Param Vir Chakra awardee and army captain Vikram Batra, it stars Sidharth Malhotra in a double role, as Batra and his identical twin brother Vishal, while Kiara Advani plays the role of Vikram’s girlfriend Dimple Cheema.
Some stories are meant to be told, and Shershaah is one such saga that could elevate patriotism in every Indian. The film has all the necessary drama inherent in a cracking war film, it does raise patriotic goosebumps, albeit in places.
The bitter truth is that, Bollywood is not an expert in making war movies with masala and melodrama. Movies like Border and Uri: The Surgical Strike turned out to blockbusters, largely because of the themes of chest-thumping jingoism. But Haqeeqat has been widely acknowledged to be far more realistic than any of the war movies made in the Eastmancolor era.
The main problem with Bollywood’s war movies is that its screenwriters tend to take too many cinematic liberties while adapting real events, hoping to boost the commercial prospects but they invariably end up distorting the facts.
several movies based on successive wars in recent history — from the 1962 Indo-China war to the 1999 Kargil battle — have been made down the years but Chetan Anand’s Haqeeqat (1964) remains arguably the best war movie ever made by the Hindi film industry yet.
Still, only a few war movies have struck a chord with the audiences. J.P. Dutta’s Border became a huge hit but he failed to recreate his magic in his next two war movies, LOC: Kargil (2003) based on ‘Operation Vijay’ of the Indian Army during the Kargil war and Paltan (2018), on the Nathu La and Cho La clashes with the Chinese army along the Sikkim border in 1967.
Some of the best war movies produced in Bollywood
1. Haqeeqat
2. Border
3. Hindustan Ki Kasam
4. Uri: The Surgical Attacks
5. LOC : Kargil
6. Lakshya
7. The Gazi Attack
You can also watch the following war movies to be released in near future
1. Major
2. Sam Bahadur
3. Ekkis
4. Bhuj : The Pride of India
5. Tejas
Review by : Dr. Sambit Begray