120 Bahadur Review: A Bland, Predictable War Drama That Lacks Emotion, Depth, And Conviction Throughout
War films tend to toil in the space between deep emotional content and large scale narrative, and 120 Bahadur does a poor job of that as it attempts to position itself as a patriotic epic but lacks the heart and weight to fulfill that. A day before its release, Farhan Akhtar compared the film to his iconic war film Lakshya as a spiritual successor. That comparison seems extraordinarily over the top. Where Lakshya was a pseudo-personal journey masquerading as a war film, 120 Bahadur sets itself up to be the kind of nationalistic mold that Lakshya was deliberately avoiding, predictable, mechanical, and emotionally empty.
Storyline
The film takes place during the 1962 India–China border crisis and tells the true story of Major Shaitan Singh Bhati and the 120 soldiers of Charlie Company who heroically defended Rezang La. The story begins with black-and-white newsreel footage of Nehru and the political atmosphere of the time, and the tired cliché of an injured soldier recapping the lost conflict. It then follows Major Shaitan Singh (Farhan Akhtar) as he leads his men into combat against bad odds in a series of increasingly dull combat scenes.
