Reviews Trailer Of Paltan: J P Dutta New War Epic Is On Its Way

Paltan , as  J P Dutta’s new war  movie is called , suggests  a large array  of soldiers all dressed to kill. Aggression at the  war-front has always been  a prime motivation  for JP’s choleric epics. Moving away from  the expected, the enemy this time is not Pakistan , but China. While focusing on  the threat from the former  we  often forget that the latter is a far more imminent threat.

Paltan’s breathless pacy trailer done in  shades of rusty-dusty virility,  shows a bunch of  solidly  committed  soldiers played by familiar (Arjun Rampal, Sonu Sood, Gurmeet Chowdhaary) and not-so-familiar(Harshvardhan Rane) faces standing up to Chinese aggression. The crushing defeat  in the 1962 Indo-China is evoked though angry dialogues .

This time soldiers  promise they won’t let  history repeat itself.And  JP Dutta, the maestro of war  movies, won’t let us forget that history has a way of repeating itself. The  trailer,  shot in frenzied fragmented images of soldiers  rushing in to  take on  their Chinese counterparts(one hopes the roles are played by authentic  Chinese actors )  has a genuine battle vibe to it.

Though  the  film doesn’t have the vast A-list cast of  JP’s  LOC Kargil(where everybody from Sanjay Dutt and Nagarjuna to Saif Ali Khan and  the JP protégé  Abhishek Bachchan pitched in  with soldierly  solidarity) Paltan’s  handsomely muted  cast is  impressively uniformed . Yup, these  actors  look like soldiers who can  protect  our borders  .

Also, this time JPDutta doesn’t  focus so much on the solidiers’ pining beloveds .I did catch a  shot or two in the trailer where we see the girls running after  their battle-bound beloveds. But over- all the focus here  is , errr,  uniformly on  the battle  being played out  at the border without  digressions into the soldiers’ love  lives.

Clearly then  J P Dutta has learnt  from his past mistakes. I have a feeling Paltan  would not stretch itself  out into  three hours of back and  forth between border-line battle and  homely heartaches . Brevity and  bravado go hand in hand in the trailer of Paltan. The rugged outdoors with real guns and  explosions would make  Patlan a rare  war outing in  Bollywood.

I for one  can’t wait for  the first week of September when J P Dutta’s Paltan arrives in all its  sinewy glory.   Sorely missed would be  Abhishek Bachchan. I searched  for  a  glimpse of JP Dutta’s favourite whom he  introduced 18 years  ago in  the underrated  Refugee. When  JP last directed a film the illfated Umrao Jaan  12 years ago Abhishek fell in love with his leading lady Aishwarya Rai.

There  is love blossoming in Paltan too. Between the matra bhoomi(mother land) and  its protectors . And that interrupted romance between  J P Dutta and the war epic is also back on  the  track.

All guns blazing.