Film Review — MajorSaab

For where else can you get an academy that apparently has no recruitment procedure, no great educational qualification requirements and an obviously flexible age limit for aspirants, where the training comprises mainly song and dance sequences, where there are open gutters with underground tunnels leading you out of the academy whenever you desire, and most important, where the motto is to ensure that the cadets get to marry their beloved, to which end the entire machinery of the academy can be put to use if required, with everyone from the cadets to instructors pitching in their mite?

Where Operation Brass Tacks means breaking into the house of your sweetheart with high-tech weapons belonging to the Indian Army to thwart her marriage with someone else, where first-termers of 16 to 17 years of age can, not only get married, but even have the instructors and commandant doing an enthusiastic bhangra at the wedding and where femme-fatales pictures are nailed on trees by the drill instructor to put some zest in your drill routine?

As soon as the movie starts, your mind is flooded with sinking feelings that this is going to be one of those `army-inspired films’ that make you cringe at every frame. And you are not disappointed. From spoilt brat Ajay Devgun snapping his fingers at his lawyer with a “Make arrangements for me to join the Military Academy” to Sonali Bendre walking through the corridors of the academy with no questions asked to pour out her love for Devgun to Major Jaspal Rana (Bachchan) and his cadets donning on the war paint to fight underworld dons and rescue Bendre from her wedding venue, the film is one that goes from the unbelievable to the ludicrous, without a moment’s respite.

To say that the movie does not connect to NDA life is a gross understatement. The lapses are far too glaring and far too many to be excused under the umbrella of cinematic liberties. Amitabh Bachchan as Major Jaspal Singh Rana supports a beard (not allowed except on religious or medical grounds), an attitude (not encouraged on any grounds) and an amazingly colourful ceremonial uniform (not seen at any ceremony) as he strides around the academy referring to the cadets as `my army’. Later as he takes them out to fight local dons you realise he actually meant it. Then of course there is the unforgivable scene of Bachchan whacking Devgun with his baton, the inexplicable shot of him leading cadets on a drill singing Jaan par hum khelenge even as the cadets chorus Khelenge khelenge! and the preposterous act of nailing Bendre’s picture on a tree to inspire a injured Devgun on drill.

You further have the man, who is referred to as the paradigm of discipline and decorum, lowering himself and his cadets into a tunnel through the gutter in a bid to secretly leave the academy without permission, to thwart the marriage of his cadet’s sweetheart to someone else. If that is not enough, he then even arranges this first termer’s baraat later on, that has not only him and the cadets, but even the academy’s commandant (who has been given the rank of a mere Brigadier (instead of the regulatory Maj General or Lt General) shaking an inspired leg. Keeping with the spirit of things, the academy too is lit up like a Christmas tree for the momentous occasion.

Devgun on his part is an over-age, pampered brat who has apparently been expelled from every college in town and makes it to NDA on the basis of instructions issued to his lawyer. UPSC Examination -Whazzatt? Services Selection Board – come again? Dividing his time between the hospital at NDA and Sonali Bendre outside NDA, he moves around the academy with an unshorn look, sloppy gait and a lovelorn expression. One scene even has him winning the marathon (his daily routine, notwithstanding) and running up the steps of the Sudan Block exchanging `high fives’ with proud instructor Bachchan rather than the obviously out-dated salute. In fact the student-instructor camaraderie gets stronger by the frame, with scenes like Devgun walking upto Bachchan after his legs have been fractured by local hoodlums and Bachchan reciprocating the sentiment by actually coming back from the dead on Devgun’s express request.

And so it carries on. There not being any open convenient manhole in the theatre for you to make an escape a la Devgun you just sit helplessly and watch NDA being reduced to an unforgivable mockery. You wonder why Bachchan bellows to a cop `Don’t mess with the army’ when he himself has proceeded to do just that from reel one to nineteen, how a Gypsy jeep could follow the Major and cadets through the manhole to enable them to bundle into it outside the NDA gates and most of all what made Bachchan choose this most prestigious institution of all as the setting, when he did not even have the slightest of inclination to do some homework about it or incorporate anything of importance about NDA in his movie. Or are we being overtly critical? Perhaps there is a logical explanation for all this. Like it not being revealed to the Big B that NDA stands for National Defence Academy and not National Dance Academy.