Commando Review- Dabang meets Rambo!

Watched Commando- The One Man Army. The movie is about an Army officer (Captain Karanvir Dogra), trained to be a Commando who ends up across the border in the Chinese territory during a training regime and is captured by them as being an Indian spy. When this is brought to the notice of the Ministry of External Affairs, the Indian government does not stand by him and decides to sweep matters under the carpet. As it turns out, the Commando escapes from the hands of the Chinese and is left to avenge himself by fighting the system singlehandedly.

The movie starts off on an interesting note where you feel that this might just be a revelation into the blinding nexus between Politics and the Armed/ Police forces in our country. However, this merely fades away into a ridiculous show of chivalry by the commando trying to save a girl (Simrit) from Himachal from a local goon (Amrit Kanwal Singh)!

I think that if one has to go watch this movie it has to be for Vidyut Jamwal playing the role of Capt. Karanvir. His entire demeanor spelled COMMANDO in capitals. And although I’m not a huge fan of heart racing, blood pumping action scenes, this one caught my fancy and of course was a welcome break from all the Rohit Shetty action that’s thrown at us these days.

Pooja Chopra who plays the role of Simrit goes way overboard with the concept of the damsel- in- distress. She emerges in pretty frocks and shorts in every gripping scene. Capt Karanvir, in an attempt to save her from the villain makes her jump off tall bridges with him, climb tall trees, gives her ayurvedic tips on surviving mosquito bites in the jungle and strategic tips on how not to leave shoe marks on the ground. Inspite of all this it does not strike her to ask him even once as to how he knows all this. And way towards the end of the movie she gets all doe- eyed and asks him “Tum ho kaun?”  Duh!! She was just ridiculously trying to emulate ‘Geet’ from ‘Jab We Met’, which is suicidal.

Oh! And here comes the most hilarious part about the movie- the Villain. Yes you read this right. Amrit Kanwal Singh calls himself AK47 for some strange reason. He plays Angry Birds on his cellphone , reads silly Santa- Banta jokes before killing someone, which is a desperate attempt at inducing comedy into the script. And there is too much unnecessary flashing of his eyeball- less eyes after every ten, no, five minutes.

Commando to me was okay as a one -time watch. The background scores were sloppy with some chasing scenes given comic scores and Dabang style cowboy music for the hero. Not Again !

But personally this will remain a landmark movie for me; reason being, in the midst of the movie the sound went mute due to a technical glitch and for the first time, I saw a movie being rewound in a Movie theater and played again. It sort of reminded me of the childhood VCR days when someone goes to get a snack from the kitchen and then makes a Rewind request to watch the scenes being missed!