Movie Review: ‘Uri: The Surgical Strike’

‘Uri: The Surgical Strike’ is a good example of the evolution of Bollywood. While we are used to seeing war movies featuring a lot of chest-thumping, a version of loud patriotism bordering of jingoism, and melodramatic scenes; ‘Uri’ takes a more restrained approach and presents us a war movie which is more restrained and realistic. Director Aditya Dhar takes inspiration from movies like ‘Zero Dark Thirty’, and gives us a gritty, grounded experience (barring some small indulgences). And going by the success of the movie, the audience really appreciates this take.

Through a series of five chapters, the movie tells the story of the events leading up to the attack on the brigade headquarters at Uri by militants, and the subsequent retaliation by the Indian army. Vicky Kaushal plays Major Vihaan Singh, whose best friend and brother in law Major Karan Kashyap (Mohit Raina) is killed in the militant attack – the story revolves around Major Vihaan’s journey from an army man who is relegated to a desk job, and then gets back on the field to head the surgical strike. The plot moves ahead through important characters like National Security Advisor Govind Bhardwaj (Paresh Rawal), an intelligence officer (Yami Gautam), an Air Force pilot Flight Lieutenant Seerat Kaur (Kirti Kulhari) and Rajat Kapur as Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Of course, given the last character, critics of this movie have called it a propaganda piece, which I will briefly give my personal take on – I don’t think it is. If you want to realistically show a success story of the military, you need to include a real-life character who did play a role in the events. I didn’t feel any scenes showed him with an exalted stature. 

Moving on – a key thing that works is that the performances are solid – Vicky Kaushal portrays the frustration of an army field officer relegated to the desk, and the anguish of losing a friend. Though he cannot give a rousing speech like Sunny Deol, he carries himself like an army officer thanks to his bulked-up physique and body language. I was also very impressed by Mohit Raina as Major Karan Kashyap. Of course, the other actors are reliable as expected.

For me, the main aspect that separates ‘Uri’ from other Bollywood army movies is the deliberate move to not go in the direction of melodrama – kinda like ‘Lakshya’, but this one is purely an army action movie and I felt landed more solidly. The direction is solid, the camerawork captures the urgency of the situation, the action scenes are choreographed in a natural manner without downplaying anything, and the background score is very good despite (or maybe because of) being used reservedly.

On the whole, I was very impressed with ‘Uri: The Surgical Strike’. It’s nice to see that a movie like this did so well. Seems like the josh is pretty high on this one. In case you’re one of the few people who didn’t catch it, it is streaming on ZEE5.