‘Sky Force’ movie review: Akshay Kumar hijacks this tale of valour

Veer Pahariya and Akshay Kumar in ‘Sky Force’

The dogfight between the Indian Air Force’s Mystere and Pakistan Air Force’s Starfighter during the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war is among the finest aerial contents in the IAF’s history. This Republic Day week, two debutant directors, Sandeep Kewlani and Abhishek Anil Kapurjoin hands to recreate the exploits of Squadron Leader Ajjmanda B Devaiah or Tammy in the Sargodha air strike. Devaiah’s crucial role in the victory remained obscure for two decades till the dogged persistence of his team leader Wing Commander OP Taneja brought the facts of the fight to light and the country honoured Devaiah with the Mahavir Chakra. Curiously, the script follows a similar pattern and keeps his contribution as a surprise factor. Like in real life, he remains ‘missing in action’ for a long time in the cinematic retelling.

Responding to Pakistan’s attack on Pathankot and Halwara airbases, Sargodha was India’s first air strike inside Pakistan when the IAF hit the enemy’s most protected airbase and destroyed its 10 prized assets. Devaiah made the slow-moving, subsonic Mystere punch above his weight to shoot down the much faster and technologically superior supersonic Starfighter to save his colleagues.

While the recent surge in nationalistic narratives may serve a socio-political purpose, they also punctuate that the political will and firepower of the Indian armed forces are not a post-2014 development. In this regard, Sky Force is a welcome addition to the tales of national pride. The archival images of Lal Bahadur Shastri, the diminutive force behind the success of 1965, give perspective to India’s might.

Kewlani and Kapur have assisted Amar Kaushik of Stry fame. Kaushik has co-produced the film with Dinesh Vijan. Theirs is the only team that is consistently hitting targets at the Bollywood box office, perhaps because they service the story rather than the star. However, in Sky Forcethey have somewhat deviated from the path. Here the star of the story is Mahavir Chakra Awardee Devaiah, fictionalised as Krishna Vijayan (played by newcomer Veer Pahariya). He is the ‘rebel’, the nonconformist in the force who was denied his name in the history books for more than two decades because of circumstances and official apathy. The character makes for a more colourful and nuanced central protagonist than Vir Chakra awardee Wing Commander O.P Taneja fictionalised as Kumar Om Ahuja, performed by Akshay Kumar with his trademark zeal, which turns out to be misplaced in the context of the film. Like the fictional name combines the star’s real and on-screen identity, the film’s gaze is tilted toward Akshay, making the storytelling and the emotional experience incongruous.

Vijayan’s story carries the heft to whip up nationalist sentiments. We want to know more about him, and Veer Pahariya puts in effort to make his present felt but is reduced to a supporting act, as the film panders to Akshay’s screen image of a patriot that has become painfully predictable these days. Ahuja is the narrator, expected to lead us into the story of Vijayan, but when Akshay becomes the driving force, the subject becomes secondary. It unravels like a textbook chapter, without the emotional texture of the soldier, left out of the action as a stand-by. Akshay not only eats up the screen time of Vijayan, he also reduces the contribution of PAF’s Flight Lieutenant Amjad Hussain (Sharad Kelkar), whose account of the combat in John Fricker’s book Battle For Pakistan brought Vijaya’s contribution to light, to little more than a footnote. Perhaps, the makers are conscious that these are not times to cede some brownie points to the ‘enemy’.

Opposite the men in uniform, the female characters don’t have much scope to express themselves. As the pregnant wife of Vijayan, Sara Ali Khan fails to add any layers to the story. Nimrat Kaur shines in her three-scene appearance as the gutsy spouse of Ahuja. In a film about teamwork, Manish Chaudhari and other supporting actors are also there to take command from Akshay. They always miss the trick until the star shows them the possibilities.

Moreover, the cinematic depiction of aerial adventures comes with a limitation. The fighter planes chew up the scenery, providing the heroes little space for action and emotional maneuvering. We get repetitive shots of men in aviators sauntering on the tarmac to a walloping background score. While some of the computer-generated combat in the air is truly effective, after a point when only machines operate on screen, the awe factor gradually dissipates.

In the last 15-20 minutes, when Vijayan’s valour takes centre stage, the VFX-generated somersaults finally find an emotional purpose and bring one to the edge of the seat. But by then, one had gasped a lot of thin airtime to absorb its impact.

Sky Force is currently running in theatres