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Shourya

Shaurya : Movie Review
04th Apr 2008 23.50 IST
By Aparajita Ghosh

‘Shaurya’ is not so much about patriotism as it is about values like righteousness, integrity, justice and self-belief.

The battleground in Shourya is a courtroom and the fight is for truth. Needless to say truth wins in the end, but how that truth unfolds or is made to unfold by the protagonist is what keeps you glued to the screen throughout the second half of ‘Shaurya’. That is only if you haven’t watched the 1992 Hollywood film ‘A Few Good Men’, starring Tom Cruise and Kevin Bacon as two army lawyers and the supertalented Jack Nicholsan as an arrogant but highly decorated army chief at Guantanamo Bay.

In ‘Shaurya’, the setting is Srinagar and the head on the line is that of Captain Javed Khan (Deepak Dobriyal), who is accused of killing a fellow officer.

The task of defending Javed Khan in the court goes to Major Siddhant or Sid ( Rahul Bose ), an intelligent but reluctant army lawyer. The prosecution lawyer is none other than Sid’s best friend Major Aakash ( Javed Jaffrey ), who believes in going by the book when it comes to matters of law.

The trouble is that the accused, Javed Khan, is tongue-tied. He refuses to reveal the truth about what actually happened.

Also add to the picture a journalist named Kaavya ( Minissha Lamba ) for whom the army bases and the court-martial proceedings do not seem to be miraculously off-limits.

As Sid digs deeper into the case and unravels the truth, he begins to find his vision, his voice, his self belief and his courage, enough to put a highly decorated and honorable man like Brigadier Rudra Pratap Singh ( Kay Kay Menon ) on the stand.

The final face-off between Sid and Brigadier in the courtroom is the high-point of the film.

Kay Kay Menon has a comparatively smaller role but the actor stamps his authority in just a few scenes. The way Menon lends a domineering and sarcastically condescending persona to his character leaves you flabbergasted.

Rahul Bose does fine and brings about a credible transformation in his character from a rickety, unsure youth to a man who risks putting his career on the line just for bringing the truth out to light.

Javed Jaffery is pretty okay playing a confident lawyer from whose grip the case gradually slips away. Minissha Lamba’s character seems deliberately created to ensure some feminine presence in the story. But she does well for her part. Deepak Dobriyal is impressive and expressive even though he stays silent in the film.

Director Samar Khan has made a fairly watchable film on courage. But how I wish he himself had shown some courage and talent to make an original film rather than lifting from a Hollywood flick and making certain changes in the name of originality.

The film’s punchline says: “It takes courage to make right…right”. True. But it also takes courage to be original. If only the director had shown the same self-belief as his film’s protagonist.

Anyway, the performances and the theme of ‘Shaurya’ are still worth a few stars.

Rating: **1/2

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Shourya
Rahul Bose
Javed Jaffrey
Minissha Lamba
Kay Kay Menon