Tango Charlie: The anti-war war film : Bollywood News : ApunKaChoice.Com


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Tango Charlie: The anti-war war film
26th Mar 2005 21.10 IST
By Nitika Desai

To secure peace is to prepare for war. And to wage a war against war is to show its reality, its absurdity, its horror and to show the lives it takes in the name of peace. ‘Tango Charlie’ attempts to do that.

Starring Bobby Deol , Ajay Devgan , Sanjay Dutt (cameo), Sunil Shetty (cameo), Tanishaa and Nandana Sen , the film is directed by Mani Shankar

Tango Charlie shows the grim and gory realities of war through the eyes of young BSF soldier Tarun Chauhan (code name Tango Charlie). The film finely brings out the dilemmas in the conscience of a man getting exposed to the killings on battlefield and shows his transformation into a strong-hearted soldier.

Tarun (Bobby) is a member of a group of BSF soldiers with the task of flushing out Bodo militants from the dense jungles of Manipur. His mentor in this mission is Hawaldar Mohammad Ali (Ajay Devgan), a hardened man who understands well the psychology of warfare.

The film tracks the path of Tarun’s life from the warfront to the village he goes, where he falls in love with a girl named Laachi (Tanishaa), and his return to the action grounds in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and finally Kargil, where his mentor Ali dies in a mission, and Tarun, like a hardened soldier, chases his enemy and kills a good number of them.

The effort by director Mani Shankar is noteworthy but not worthy of praise. Mani, who said in an interview that he detested the romanticization of war in our so-called patriotic films, himself passes through the same trap with the interludes of love episodes between Bobby Deol and Tanishaa that he puts in the film.

Bobby Deol impresses with his acting but it is Ajay Devgan who comes forth a scene-stealer with his intense portrayal of a fearless, self-controlled Hawaldar who is deceptive to his enemies.

All in all, ‘Tango Charlie’ defies the usual Bollywood stereotype but fails to emerge as a movie to reckon with.