More often than not, good war movies aren’t built from the action or the war sequences alone – these stories need to be told through a human lens; tales of valour and heartbreak, of sacrifice and the human cost of something as devastating as war, of the people that enter the battlefield and the ones they leave behind.
We throw around the phrase, ‘All is fair in love and war’ and one wonders if we stop to think about the weight behind that sentence; of moral boundaries that need to exist in war (and love). It’s in these nuances that a war movie actually shines.
In that aspect, Sky Force stands out in the crowd of war movies we’ve had to watch (or endure) over the past decade. We have had no dearth of war movies in that time, with many following the same template and some becoming almost indistinguishable from others with respect to screenplay, dialogues, and messaging.
The movie, directed by Sandeep Kewlani and Abhishek Anil Kapur, follows a tried-and-tested template. While interrogating a prisoner of war from the Pakistani Air Force (played by Sharad Kelkar), Wing Commander KO Ahuja (Akshay Kumar) finds his first clue in a while about one of his colleagues who was declared missing in action during the Indian Air Force’s operation at the Sargodha air base. This played out in 1971.
Sky Force then enters an extended flashback to the 1960s where Ahuja trains his squadron to expertly commandeer the Mystere IVa fighter-bomber aircrafts all while explaining that the aircraft was inferior in build and technology to the opponent’s F-104 Starfighter, a supersonic interceptor that hit speeds the Mystere wasn’t capable of.
“You don’t fight an aircraft,” Ahuja says to his men, “You fight the man inside.” In a sequence of dog fights, as one would expect from the film, one man stands out – code name ‘Tabby’ – pilot T Vijaya (Veer Pahariya) who, in many ways, is the film’s focus. Vijaya is confident but flouts orders and yet, everyone agrees, is incredibly skilled.
This is a film that feels short on realism (owing to the dramatisation of both characters and scenes) but not on grandeur. The fight sequences are impeccable – the booming fighter jets cut an imposing figure in the sky. These daredevil stunts and acts of courage form a majority of the film’s first half but two things help the film – technical execution (the absence of mind-boggling jargon included) and smart pacing (owing to a sharp edit).
And while the film isn’t interested in delving too deep into issues of morality and psychology of war and those involved in it, it’s refreshing to see a film that doesn’t rely solely on jingoism and pandering to make its point. Yet, this same reluctance hurts the film – India’s stance on aggression and diplomacy is talked about, sometimes criticised, but nobody has an actual conversation about why a country would choose the path.
It would’ve been possible to touch upon that and still look into the intricacies of red tape and bureaucracy in times of conflict but the makers end up focusing largely on the latter but without the former, this exploration lacks nuance.
The second half of the film soars higher when it zeroes in on Ahuja’s quest and investigation to ‘find’ Vijaya or get a concrete answer for the latter’s wife (played by an underwhelming Sara Ali Khan) and young daughter. From answers appearing in the pages of a book and a letter to the mutual respect between two pilots divided by a border, Sky Force picks a steady stride.
For the most part, Sky Force is an Akshay Kumar show – the actor gets his chance to showcase a wider range of emotions that other films in the recent part have presented. There’s still the shadow of ‘Akshay Kumar’ the Bollywood star cast over his performance but it’s the same act that drives the film over some of its rougher patches. In his debut, Pahariya is watchable – he looks the part of a young pilot with fire in his eyes and a steadfast determination to serve his nation. The only drawback is his currently limited ability to emote in silences.
For instance, Nimrat Kaur (as Ahuja’s wife) carries some of her scenes through expressions and reactions alone and that makes up for her limited (unfortunately) screen time. Even in the little time she gets, she fills in a scene – you know that her absence would be missed.
It’s this gap in performance that Pahariya perhaps needs to work on but for a debut, his performance shows potential. That being said, he has an easygoing chemistry with Kumar – perfectly embodying the relationship between a mentor and a mentee. A relationship where the lines of professional and personal are blurred. The mantra has worked since the Top Gun days and hasn’t lost its charm.
To the makers’ credit, they understand how to mount tension and that’s the film’s saving grace considering how oversaturated the genre has become. Most of the film’s songs feel out of place, owing largely to a distinct separation from the time the film is supposed to be set in – look back at Sam Bahadur’s tracks for some inspiration for what could’ve and should’ve been.
However, the soulful ‘Maaye’ by Tanishk Bagchi with lyrics by Manoj Muntashir is exceptional. The song almost morphs into a leitmotif, scoring some of the film’s most effective scenes.
The film’s undoing, however, is frequently amateurish dialogue writing which is a pity considering how well-planned a lot of the visual storytelling is. And while some of the camerawork and VFX is self-indulgent, it works for this film. The dialogues, however, reduce the efficacy of several scenes.
Sky Force is, by no means, a ‘bad’ film – it’s actually quite an engaging watch. From understanding how to keep the audience hooked on a reveal to creating empathy for short-lived appearances too, Sky Force is a sincere telling inspired by a real-life story of immense valour.