120 Bahadur movie review: It was 120 against 3000, and on that fateful November day in 1962, the one hundred and twenty Indian soldiers led by Major Shaitan Singh Bhati kept the much larger Chinese contingent at bay, giving up their lives to save the crucial Chushul valley in Ladakh.
It came to be known as the Battle of Rezang La, and in the continuous onslaught of the Chinese army, only six soldiers of the Charlie Company, 13 Kumaon Regiment, almost all of them Ahirs, survived. Farhan Akhtar plays Bhati with brio, leading his men into a ‘jung’ from where there was no coming back, and the result is a war film which brims with the action-and-emotion necessary for a Bollywood drama, but refuses to go under because of it.
The 1964 Haqeeqat, directed by Chetan Anand, was an account of the same conflict, but that was a purer time when identity politics hadn’t taken over the discourse: here, the soldiers underline the fact that they come from the same area, with familiar, linguistic connection with each other. The war cry, Dada Kisan Ki Jai, is clearly a clan thing; that the two mates shown bickering will be found in close embrace in death is foreshadowed in that early scene.
What’s heartening is that the film rises above these limitations, and we see the ‘120 bahadurs’ coming together to save their zameen and sarzameen from the Chinese aggressors, with their meagre guns and mortars and finally, hand-to-hand combat. The last hour, which sustains the battle’s intensity, makes up for the line of personal flashbacks in a song, which will instantly remind you of the ‘Sandese Aate Hain’ song from the 1997 ‘Border’, also written by Javed Akhtar.
But these flashes are not allowed to bury the film, which returns to the battlefield, and shows us Bhati and his men– most played believably by first-time actors — fight till their last breath.
The ‘vardi’ and the ‘valour’ that demands that ultimate ‘balidaan’ brings a lump to the throat, and a tear to the eye.
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