Movie Review: Airlift (2016)

Airlift (2016) directed by Raja Krishna Menon

It's 1990 and Ranjit Katyal (Akshay Kumar) is an Indian businessman living a successful life in Kuwait. He's rather self-centered and imagines himself a Kuwaiti rather than an Indian. After taking his wife Amrita (Nimrat Kaur) to a lavish party, he's woken up at three in the morning by a call. The Iraqis have invaded Kuwait. Since Ranjit is well-connected, he's certain he can take care of things with the Kuwaiti government. By the next day, the government is gone and Ranjit races with his driver to the Indian embassy to find a way out of the country. They are stopped at a checkpoint and the driver is killed. Ranjit has to deal with an Iraqi Republican Guard officer (Inaamulhaq) who was once a bodyguard for Ranjit during a visit to Baghdad. Ranjit gets some assurance that his family will be safe; when he returns to home, he discovers it's been ransacked by Iraqi soldiers. Desperate to find his wife and child, Ranjit looks everywhere, eventually going to his office. His family is there, along with his employees and their families, a rapidly growing group of people. The Iraqis are killing anyone who is Kuwaiti and the Indians are worried about being mistaken for locals. Ranjit has the chance to flee with his wife but he realizes there's 170,000 Indian citizens in Kuwait City with no way out. He rises to the occasion, forming a refugee camp at a school campus and looking for a way for everyone to escape safely.

The movie is based on a true story about the 170,000 people trapped in a country that's no longer its own country. The story is powerful and inspiring, how one man rose to the occasion and organized the people to survive and escape. Even though he starts as dismissive toward India and has a lot of trouble getting help from the Indian government, he sees other people (including bureaucrats in the Indian External Affairs Ministry) rise to the occasion too. By film's end, Ranjit has a sense of pride in his homeland and his fellow Indians. 

The movie is both exciting and well-told. The acting is great. Kumar and Kaur have good chemistry and play the dramatic moments just right, showing both the tension and the love in their relationship. The production values are top-notch, especially the war-torn streets of Kuwait City. As a Bollywood film, there is one song-and-dance number early on. The rest of the film is more straightforward, with the songs giving emotional heft to visual montages. 

Highly recommended.

The movie is discussed on A Good Story Is Hard to Find podcast #255. Check it out!