Film review: 'Lamhaa' fails to acheive the effect that 'Parzania' had

Film: Lamhaa
Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Bipasha Basu, Kunal Kapoor, Anupam Kher
Director: Rahul Dholakia
Rating:  * *

While Rahul Dholakia’s first film ‘Parzania’ brought forth with
gravitas the futility of  the Gujarat riots of 2002, he fails to
achieve the same effect with his latest film, ‘Lamhaa,’ based on the Kashmir problem.  With Sanjay Dutt, Bipasha and Kunal Kapoor, essaying the main characters in this film, Dholakia appears to have sold out to the commerce. ‘Lamhaa’ doesn’t have the regressive  ‘item’ number in it’s folds but it does have an incredible ‘hero’ dictating the progress of  the narrative when it should have ideally been story driven.  Sanjay Dutt plays the typical hero figure who appears out of nowhere  getting  his typical solo soft  focused entry  with musical accompaniment et al, few moments into the start of the film.

From there he goes on to establish his  superhuman credentials by  jumping across buildings,  rescues  a damsel in distress , uses  friendly diplomacy to resolve a crisis and works  undercover to eke out intel info that the best could not manage to unearth. But Sanjay Dutt in this case, despite all the expended screentime, is an unlikely hero.

He appears too old, too unfit, extremely sluggish and sports a body language that is just not convincing. He is supposedly an intelligence officer sent undercover to unveil a plot meant to sabotage the coming elections. And he is expected to prevent the terrorists, separatists, activists, opportunists and political leaders( all are suspects) from escalating the  conflict to Jammu.
Dholakia’s narrative hyper-ventilates for most of it’s run-time.

Right from the prologue- a basic history of the kashmir conflict, to the scenes of indoctrination, foreign interference, resident
dissatisfaction, abuse by armed forces and political indecisiveness, we are treated to continuous visuals of unrest and mayhem.  Dholakia and team try to incorporate Taleban elements into the narrative but they appear borrowed and unconvincing of the true Kashmir reality.

James Fowlds camera movements appear unnecessarily frenetic and distracting. A few of the  visuals look stunning but the  unsteady nature of the camerawork is off-putting. The editing doesn’t allow for much coherence either. Kunal Kapoor  doesn’t have the talent or the personality to play seperatist leader Aatif  with conviction. His performance is acutely passionless and the less said about his dialogue delivery the better.  Bipasha on the other hand manages to imbue Aziza with enough conviction to make her performance the piece-de-resistance of the film.