IC814: The Kandahar Hijack Story Cast/Actors: Vijay Varma, Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Arvind Swamy, Manoj Pahwa, Kumud Mishra, Aditya Srivastava, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Sushant Singh, Kanwaljit Singh, Dia Mirza, Patralekha, Amrita Puri, Pooja Gaur & others.
IC814: The Kandahar Hijack Story Director: Anubhav Sinha
IC814: The Kandahar Hijack Story Production Company: Benaras Mediaworks & Matchbox Shots
IC814: The Kandahar Hijack Story Release Date: 29th August, 2024
IC814: The Kandahar Hijack Story Available On: Netflix
IC814: The Kandahar Hijack Story Released/Available In Languages: Hindi
IC814: The Kandahar Hijack Story No. Of Episodes: 6
IC814: The Kandahar Hijack Story Runtime: 40 Mins Per Episode (Approx.)
IC814: The Kandahar Hijack Story Critic Review:
Remember the game, pin the tail on the donkey? Spin blindfolded around the room and try to pin the tail on the donkey.
Heavyweight filmmaker Anubhav Sinha’s OTT debut, the 6-episode series on the hijack of December 1999, is like the donkey’s tail. Pin the blame anywhere in the room, someone will have to stand up and take the rap for the botch-up of the hostage-terrorist swap on Taliban soil.
Taking his cues from the book Flight Into Fear, authored by Captain Devi Sharan and Srinjoy Chowdhury, Anubhav takes off with an actor as admirable as Vijay Varma in the cockpit as Captain Sharan and staffs the ground with a line-up of Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur (who are brothers-in-law in real life), Arvind Swamy, Manoj Pahwa, Kumud Mishra, Aditya Srivastava, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Sushant Singh, Kanwaljit Singh et al. While the list is long and overwhelming on paper, on screen it’s a bit of a confusion. What happened to IC814 may be known as the longest hijack in Indian aviation but the first four episodes also make it the slowest flight ever. All you gather is that five hijackers wearing different accents took over the Kathmandu-Delhi flight and the Airbus A 300 kept landing and taking off (Amritsar, Lahore, Dubai) until it finally touched ground in Kandahar.
While Captain Varma, enduring a gun pressed against his neck for hours, keeps his plane, his team and the passengers safe by following the terrorists’ instructions, Anubhav and his co-writers Adrian Levy and Trishant Srivastava have their impressive array of actors looking solemn but clueless on ground as they play an assortment of Indian officials. RAW, IB, army, commandos, bureaucrats, diplomats, ministers. It’s difficult to tell who’s playing which role but you get the gist. Delhi had ignored an Indian agent’s tip-off from Kathmandu about the Indian Airlines flight, responsibility now volleys between different intelligence and security departments. Between citing the compulsions of a coalition government (that drags its feet over crucial decisions), the geopolitics of the day (the US miffed with India’s nuclear test plus the Kargil War) and using a bit of real footage (of PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee and FM Jaswant Singh), Anubhav spotlights the Taliban as the epitome of hospitality and fairplay (“No bloodshed on our soil”) despite India not having officially recognised their government. Indian officials who’ve turned up for negotiations are the ones smirking at the squatting style commode in Kandahar. Never mind that the hijackers were supported by Osama Bin Laden who was living with impunity on Afghan soil at that very moment.
On ground, Sinha also takes a moment to look at Indian print and TV media with Dia Mirza and Amrita Puri debating the line between factual journalism and security concerns that call for discretion in reporting.
The viewer also gets brief glimpses of the personal lives of the captain and a couple of air hostesses. And there’s wit with a bit of depth in the bantering between Arvind Swamy and Manoj Pahwa.
But Sinha deflects from Pakistan’s role in the hijack and humanises the terrorist. He does narrate the cruel butchering of a newly married male passenger but balances it with more of the hijackers helping an air hostess clean herself after she retches over the mess thrown up by a clogged toilet, on a game of antakshari the crew plays with their captors and on a fleeting bit of chemistry between a cabin crew member and a hijacker.
Sinha’s main focus is on turning the searchlight inward on Indian inter-departmental interests which had the government of the day capitulate (even force the Abdullahs of J&K to release a terrorist from their cells) and give up three hardened terrorists (including the dreaded Maulana Masood Azhar of Jaish-e-Mohammed) for the safe release of 170+ passengers and crew. Did India mess up? We did. On intelligence, on negotiations, on delays, on the settlement. The men we released unleashed new terror on India in the new millennium, orchestrating 26/11 and the attack on Parliament.
But, caught up in giving a slant that tilts away from Osama, the Taliban, the hijackers and the ISI, and by packing in too many Indian officials to share in the blame game, Anubhav Sinha makes it less chilling and less thrilling than the hijack drama ought to have been.
Ram Madhvani’s Neerja (2016) that successfully told the story of another hijack remains platinum. I’d give Anubhav a bronze.
IC814: The Kandahar Hijack Story Watch it or not?: Since it’s on OTT, watch it slowly and carefully to understand every character. There is a good story in there with sound performances.
IC814: The Kandahar Hijack Story Review Score Rating: 3 out of 5 (i.e. 3/5)
IC814: The Kandahar Hijack Story Official Trailer:
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