'Kaafila', a doomed shipwreck film

Film: "Kaafila"; Cast: Sunny Deol, Ammtoje Mann; Director: Ammtoje Mann; Rating: * Marooned on a beach after a ship sinks, the stunned survivors of this shipwrecked drama of the damned look around askance wondering what to do next.

Only god and the creators of this ham-handed homage to hysteria know why "Kaafila" got on to celluloid.

You need nerves of steel to sit through three hours of this nauseous and numbing migrants' journey from illicit travel to India-Pakistan camaraderie and the final homecoming - all done in the spirit of a patriotic play.

Every old formula from shipwreck stories has been dumped into this voyage of the damned.

Says one of the many smirking villains about super-hero Sunny Deol. "He can stop a ship from sinking."

But Sunny can certainly not stop this leaky ship from sinking. "Kaafila" is one of those nobly intended disasters that turn out to be an indigestible mess. It could easily qualify as the worst film of the year, if not the decade.

The plot screams for a semblance of maturity in handling the theme of a big bunch of illegal migrants making their way into Britain through Russia and Afghanistan.

There's no dearth of the great wide outdoors in this despicable disaster. Ammtoje Mann's direction takes us through some eye-catching locales in Russia and Afghanistan and we even get a glimpse of crowded Rawalpindi towards the end when the narrative.

Mann heads the cast, as a moping lover-boy pining for his lost love. Sunny Deol joins the ragged travellers midway. He too pines for lost love, his Anglo-Saxon love interest being the most eye-catching entity in this film swarming with characters who scream and sing to make themselves heard over the din of damnation that underlines the project.

In one word Kaafila is unbearable.

By Subhash K. Jha