On a first watch, Shourya seems to be a very good movie with a very good plot. One of the rare movies which is inspired from Hollywood(in this case, Few Good Men) and gets it right. The movie has very good dialogues, especially from Kay Kay Menon. He is also supported well by Rahul Bose in acting. All in all, on the first watch, it leaves you inspired about Indian army and the pride which is associated with it. It also gives you hope about Bollywood, finally a movie well done.
However it is only probably the second or the third time that I watched it fully that I could identify something very subtly hidden, something which is disturbing. May be it is my exaggeration or just a dire attempt to find something wrong in the movie.
Unlike Few Good Men, where right from the start the motive behind the act seemed very clear, here the motive behind the act only gets clear very much to the end of the movie. In Few Good Men, the story keeps building till the last scene. However in Shourya, the story for the most part is not as much associated with the case. This makes the last part,the climax, much more profound in the movie.
The complete case changes when the motive behind the Brigadier’s action is revealed all of a sudden in the movie. This motive is actually where the movie digresses from Few Good Men and this motive is actually something which is really subtly hidden disturbing thing according to me. In Few Good Men, the whole case is about how a junior goes against his superiors and hence hurts their pride and ego. However here the junior’s main crime is with his religion and the motive revolves around the same. Brigadier is shown to have extreme fundamentalism and that seems to be his motive behind why he treats his junior from the minority religion in such a way.
In Shourya, the movie is about Javed Khan being Muslim and how Brigadier Pratap’s extreme fundamentalist views makes him give free reign to his officers to conduct atrocities against Muslims in the region. Hence the motive of Brigadier’s action is fundamentalism rather than Pride and Honor which is the case in Few Good Men. If the movie had stopped at it, it would have been understandable. However what the script writer does is also try to explain the reason behind Brigadier’s fundamentalism. In less than two minutes, a story about Brigadier’s complete family being murdered by a servant, Jameel who was with the family since his childhood and to whom Brigadier was very cordial is revealed. Jameel being a Muslim, very subtly, Brigadier’s fundamentalism is justified in the movie. In that small story, script writer clearly portrays how Jameel even though being with the family since his childhood and knowing the family had the fundamentalistic mindset and hence was able to brutally murder the family. What is disturbing is that though the movie talks about a Muslim’s patriotism through Javed, through another Muslim, Jameel, it also talks about some heinous incidents caused by a Muslim. The script writer clearly could not comprehend that a Hindu’s fundamentalism cannot be just because his understanding of the other religion and people is wrong. He tries to ascertain that Hindu’s fundamentalism is only because there is a Muslim who does heinous incidents to their family. Else they are always very cordial with them.
Hence subtly the movie tries to portray two points. For every patriot Muslim, there is a equally fundamentalist Muslim in India. Also behind every fundamentalist Hindu, there is a fundamentalist Muslim’s actions behind it. It is very unfortunate that the script writer had to include the story of Jameel to justify the act of Brigadier. It is unfortunate that a movie depicting Muslim’s patriotism actually conveys something like this subtly.
Ofcourse may be this is just criticism for the sake of criticism and clearly even I couldnt recognize it when I watched it first time.
I think these subtle messages are something which script writer needs to be well aware of and its understanding is what differentiates between great and good movie.
