Sunny Deol's latest excursion into the patriotic genre has him itching for a good fight with our neighbours.

'Maa Tujhhe Salaam'

The Plot

Lala (Tinu Verma) is the unspoken chieftain of Jhonabad, a picturesque village near the India-Pakistan border. When Albaksh (Arbaaz Khan), his faithful henchman, realises that his master is using him for unpatriotic activities like arms smuggling, he swears to protect his motherland, i.e. India, against the Pakistanis that Lala is in cahoots with. Captain Pratap Singh (Sunny Deol), an Indian military officer, and his girlfriend, Captain Sonia Khanna (Tabu), also get involved in this skirmish.

The Review

The most interesting aspect of 'Maa Tujhhe Salaam' is figuring out why Sunny Deol is headlining a film that so clearly belongs to Arbaaz Khan. Oh, Sunny does get to spew his patriotic rhetoric every now and then. And the action sequences, especially the climax showing him single-handedly advancing toward an entire battalion with the tricolour strapped around his waist, are designed to appeal to his fans. But everything interesting revolves around Arbaaz.

All we know about Pratap is that he's patriotic. But about Albaksh, we know that he's a devout orphan, a man of staunch loyalties and feelings that belie his barrel-chested brawn. He has a girlfriend Nargis (Monal), who at first seems to be a plot contrivance whose fate at the hands of the bad guys will set Albaksh off on a vendetta. But that never happens; she actually gets more scope to emote than Sonia.

The Albaksh-Nargis pair gets a 'judaai ka gaana' all to themselves. Albaksh corners the film's token 'Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai' scene when he gets 'aashirwad' from a Hindu he's wronged earlier. There's even a montage of Albaksh exercising in the harsh climes.

That's why it's really surprising to see Sunny here in what is ultimately an extended cameo. But for whatever time he is on screen, he does make terrorists (literally) urinate in fear of his wrath. The disclaimer before the film may alert you that no one here resembles any person living or dead, but Sunny's character more than resembles his roles in 'Gadar' and 'Indian'.

At least, he fares better than his co-star Tabu. We surely understand her willingness to do something fluffy after her spate of serious roles, but why have her as a Captain? Wouldn't she have been equally effective, and the role less demeaning to real-life women in the armed forces, doing all this bottom-wiggling as a civilian? The poor dear even does one of those in-the-villain's-den dances in harem pants.

So it's left to Arbaaz Khan to provide us the motivation to sit through these three hours of pop-patriotism, which he does fairly well. I guess the very fact that you manage to endure his climactic 'doodh mangoge to kheer denge, Kashmir mangoge to cheer denge' proclamation with a straight face indicates that he's done a decent job.

The screenplay is littered with 'desh-bhakti' sentiments. A soldier passes around his 'gaon ki mitti' so that his comrades can smear it on their foreheads. Why, there's even a bad guy named Musharraf! And for a break, you'll find attempts at humour as when Sonia tells Pratap that she's missed him. His retort: 'Miss nahin kiya to Mrs kaise banogi?'

Director Tinu Verma stages some action scenes convincingly, but his grip is slack through most of the film. Raju Kay Gee's cinematography is excellent, what with a camera-ready location like the Himalayas before him. Composers Sajid-Wajid apparently thought that any effort would be wasted in the midst of all the 'dishum-dishum'. In any case, the wimpy songs are upstaged by the constant chants of 'Vande Mataram' and 'Saare Jahaan se Accha' in the background.

Someone should consider banning the use of our national songs in such films that pass off jingoism as patriotic fervour. It's not the entertainment-cum-propaganda rendering of war that's offensive. Landmark films like Chetan Anand's 'Haqueeqat' have done this earlier, with the reams of documentary footage balanced by commercial elements like the wonderful Madan Mohan songs. But you at least came away with some sense of dignity about these soldiers.

What you get here instead are attempts at cheap audience manipulation. Rafi's heart-rending 'Kar chale hum fida' from 'Haqueeqat' plays on while some Indian soldiers get massacred. It's the most effective scene in the film, not because of what you're seeing but due to the nostalgia evoked for a Bollywood that used to care about more than just box-office success.

The Rating

It's sad that there are actual soldiers out there whose lives are fictionalised into such routine 'masala' films, replete with a Malaika Arora item number. They'll probably tell the filmmakers that patriotism is more than simply showing Sunny picking up some 'mitti' and kissing it, the flag waving nearby.

Baradwaj Rangan

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