Operation Valentine (2024) – Tolerable

All Clickable links in red 

 

Genre – War Movie 

Language – Hindi

Time: 2 Hours, 10 minutes

Platform: Theatrical release

 

Considering the recent disaster Fighter (review here) , I approached this movie with absolute trepidation. The first few minutes somewhat confirmed this would be a waste of time as all the familiar tropes started dropping in left, right, and centre. After all how much pro Government films can you push down the audience’s throat in one month (given that another film Article 370 has also been released?)

 

I had written in the Fighter review. “Rare is the film that professionally shows the Armed Forces but settles for “dialogue baazi” and “hero-giri“. The pace, however, changed, and soon the characters were shown as professionals doing their job – which isn’t half as bad as it is made out to be. In the eternal words of the film Colonel Saxena (Pankaj Tripathy) in Kargil Girl(2020), “Do your job well, and patriotism will follow automatically”. The filmmakers have probably paid heed to “Colonel Tripathy’s” 😉 advice and done a reasonably decent job. 

 

The tropes come fast and you go – not again! Pakistan and Pakistani Air Force are openly named (Fashionable, right?). The blood-curdling Pakistanis are a standard trope. So, too, are their “mindless” terrorist slaves. On the Indian side, you have the trope of the indisciplined “lone wolf” “Maverick” hero, aka Rudra. His boorish superiors, who second guess him. His girlfriend turned wife, who is also an Air Force officer and a flight controller, who second guesses him both personally and professionally. The buddy-buddy routines. Rudra losing his buddy-cum-back-seater in the first few minutes and feeling responsible for it. All these and more are done and dusted and utterly predictable.  IF you have watched Top Gun and its follow up Maverick, you already know half the story.

 

However, the second half of the film saves the day. How the response to the Pulwama attacks, followed by the IAF response and the Pakistani “Swift Retort”, occupies the entire post-interval section, and this part is fairly interesting. The operational language also seems to be reasonably accurate. So, too, the tactics of both the Indian and Pakistani air forces.   

 

The jury is still out on what happened really about the old fashioned dogfight but each side has presented its version as The Truth. While this is the second Indian movie on the entire Pulwama + Balakot story, Pakistani ISPR, cleared a short animated video, which is available on YouTube (check for DJ Kamal Mustafa). There are short videos on YouTube by Pakistani commentators including a 35 minute video with Pakistani Air Force officers involved in the incident, being absolutely dismissive of Indian claims! 

 

As for the film story, it’s a threadbare one. From above, you would have already got how the story would progress:

1. Wing Commander Arjun “Rudra” Dev (Varun Tej) and his back-seater Kabir are testing a new low-altitude device, and predictably, it fails. They eject, and Kabir dies while Rudra is grounded. The whole conversation is monitored by Flight Controller Aahna Gill (Miss India 2017 Manushi Chillar), who also happens to be Rudra’s wife.
2. Pakistani ISI do the Pulwama attack, and this happens while Rudra is on a test flight, testing air-to-ground rockets while his wingman Yash “Anvil” Sharma (Paresh Pahuja), flying a Mig 21 Bison maintains top cover. Rudra is teased by the Pakistani F16 commander code named Shaheen (ahem – no Red Nose from  Fighter?) while being ordered to return and not cross the LOC.
3. The IAF response is the Balakot attack, which involves its share of jeopardies, with Rudra again saving the group by leading off the Pakistani interceptors.
4. Pakistan plans an attack, and it’s a complete strike package to destroy a road tunnel while a decoy mission lures Rudra and his team for an air-to-air combat

 

Now fill in the rest – including visuals of a bearded man addressing a crowd, saying, “I have ordered the Air Force to do its job.

 

There are many goofs right from the beginning – like the Il76 Phalcon AWAC’s rear door being down and shown empty, whereas it should have been packed with electronic gear. Rudra sports a Rafale patch on his right arm, but drives a Mirage 2000 throughout the movie! The usual “cool” bikes + blaring heavy metal guitars + “patriotic songs”.

 

 

So, is the film a plain open pre-election stunt? The release timing and content are not a coincidence, given that it was supposed to be released in December 2023 (see poster on left) and happens to be released before the upcoming general elections.

 

Does the film deserve better? In comparison to Fighter, a most definite yes. Fighter was all about Gigantic star power and dialogue baazi. Being a Telugu and Hindi bi-lingual release, this film lacks star power for a Hindi audience (though Varun Tej is a big star in the Telugu film industry). The “patriotism” is kept relatively low-key and there is a decent amount of “dialogue baazi”. The “hero giri” is restricted to a minimum.  The hero doesn’t crash land in PoK and bash the locals but outwits “Shaheen”, who crashes into a mountain as he is unable to pull up in time, thanks to the “new gadget”, which is finally “combat-tested”.  

 

Just like Fighter, the visual effects are stunning. For once, ‘chaff popping’ to lure radar missiles is shown reasonably well. The laser-guided bombs dropped by both the Indian Mirages and the Pakistani (CGI) JF17s (the bombers) are shown reasonably accurately. The Mig 21 Bison versions are also shown accurately.  

 

Lastly, women are not just “back office” staff but also pilots. This time, a female pilot, Tanya “Hammer” Sharma (Ruhani Sharma), is shown flying a Mig21 Bison competently. She is the “Hammer” to Yash’s “Anvil”. He is the guy who ejects over Pakistan after being shot down and is brought back to India. Oh – he doesn’t have a handlebar moustache and is clean shaven 😉 

 

This is a reasonably competent film that, for a change, shows modern air combat decently. The Air Force advisers seem to have done a competent job, resulting in some amount of authenticity that doesn’t sound “filmi”.  However, its timing is clearly a pre-election stunt designed to not so gently remind the audience who was behind all this strong-arm stuff. 

 

Real History/ Historical Background – 3 out of 5 

Script – 3 out of 5

Story – 2 out of 5

Direction – 3 out of 5

Photography – 3 out of 5

Visual Effects – 4 out of 5

 

 Total – 3 out of 5