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Film: "Mission 90 Days"; Cast: Mammootty, Tulip Joshi and Lalu
Alex; Director: Major Ravi; Producer: Sasi Ayyanchira; Music:
Jaison J. Nair. After last year's mega success of his first film
"Keerthichakra", which dealt with the Indian Army's fight against
militancy in Jammu and Kashmir and had Mohanlal in the lead role,
Major Ravi is back with "Mission 90 Days", about the hunt for
former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's killers.
In "Keerthichakra", the director wove the story around an army
operation, in which he had participated himself. However, this time
the story deals with the chasing down of Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE) terrorists who killed Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.
Mammootty plays Major Sivaraman, chief of the National Security
Guards (NSG) commandos. He is assigned to assist the Special
Investigation Team (SIT) of the Central Bureau of Investigation
(CBI) and the Tamil Nadu Police.
In this film too the director adopts the same method as in
"Keerthichakra" - he first establishes the hero and then weaves the
story around him.
So, we are introduced to Sivaraman as a daredevil who sets out on
the extraordinarily long drive from New Delhi to his home in
Kerala, without bothering about the riots on the way. He even puts
some civic sense into the traffic police on the way.
As for the investigations, however, it looks as if we are reading
the case diary of the officer-in-charge, with detailed depictions
of the chase and capture of the culprits, one by one.
The pace of the film is languid, to say the least, with winding
dialogues designed to magnify the protagonist's heroism - as
apparent in the lines delivered in justification of the Indian
Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) operation in Sri Lanka.
The film works when there is action, but the ample scope for action
remains under-utilised. The two-part climax, however, is truly
successful.
First, we are shown the events as the hero had envisaged them -
capturing Sivarasan and his group alive. Then, we witness a
realistic version of the event - bureaucratic interference and a
delay of virtually two days that means the team can take away only
the terrorists' bodies, as they get time to commit suicide.
Mammootty shines once again in uniform. But his lustrous
performance does not prevent the film from proving a bit of a
letdown.
By C.P. Parashuram
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