Karan Johar-produced film about Vikram Batra, who died in the 1999 India-Pakistan conflict, promotes him as a model citizen \u2013 with model looks to boot<\/p>\n
Hot on the heels of Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl<\/a>, last year\u2019s biopic of one of the hardier combatants in the India-Pakistan conflict of 1999<\/a>, mega-producer Karan Johar offers a disappointingly generic tribute to Vikram Batra, killed in the same conflict aged just 24. Batra\u2019s death was previously noted in 2003\u2019s all-star LOC: Kargil, where he was played by Abhishek Bachchan, and he has clearly lodged in the Indian collective memory as a model citizen; a straight arrow willing to sacrifice all for the motherland. Yet that very straightness proves an issue in a two-hour battle charge of a film that shuttles its practically perfect protagonist (codename: Shershaah, or \u201cKing of Lions\u201d) from playground fisticuffs to fateful last stand, while its idea of conflict never develops beyond the childishly superficial.<\/p>\n For starters, this is the first time Batra has been played by someone who might pass for a model: Sidharth Malhotra, ever handsome, mostly upright, sensing he needn\u2019t flex too hard to emerge looking like a sweetheart. As the film switches between Batra\u2019s personal and professional lives, its star successfully runs the trickiest gauntlet: trying not to look too gawky in the shell suits of college flashbacks. Malhotra and an unusually deglammed Kiara Advani (as Batra\u2019s beloved, Dimple) can\u2019t credibly resemble undergraduates, but they share a fond, tender chemistry. It\u2019s a pity Batra\u2019s service leave keeps being interrupted by rumbles from Kashmir \u2013 but that\u2019s where this story\u2019s destiny lies.<\/p>\n