IC 814 – The Kandahar Hijack – My Flash Review & More!

The IC 814 flight hijack incident is one that is too embedded in the collective consciousness of a whole generation of Indians who were old enough to see it unfolding back in December 1999. As a nation, if there are few events for which we have not achieved closure, this would certainly be among the top. Therefore, it was not surprising that the moment Netflix announced the release of a series based on the IC 814 hijack, it piqued the interest of many Indians including me. I watched the show with a lot of interest but towards the end had mixed feelings and felt disappointed.

My disappointment was not about the makers referring to a couple of hijackers with Hindu names – Bhola and Shankar because of which the series got caught in a Social Media storm.  The fact is, these were the pseudo names that the hijackers used to address themselves for obvious reasons and this is what has been shown. Now that Netflix agreed to put out the actual names in the beginning, the storm seems to have blown over though for anyone who watched the series, there wouldn’t have been an iota of doubt on who the hijackers were.

Now coming to my review of the series, any work of cinema could be evaluated through the lens of 2 Cs, namely “craft” and “content”. This web series shows flashes of brilliance in terms of craft but does a poor job on the content front. Let me explain.

Anubhav Sinha has come a long way as a director from the days of making a hash of a sci-fi film like Ra-One to now. In this series, admittedly, some aspects of the making are indeed praiseworthy. The choice of location for the Kandahar portion (Jordan), the cinematography, the framing of green matted scenes inside the aircraft, the flight sequences, the production design of the aircraft and other sets and the very minimal but effective background score bring to our eyes a very realistic depiction of what happened during the hijack drama.

The “cast” is impressive but the “casting” is not. The series boasts of a heavy-weight ensemble cast of the likes of Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Arvind Swamy, Vijay Varma, Aditya Shrivastava, Kumud Mishra, Manoj Pahwa, Dia Mirza and so on. But is the casting appropriate? Manoj Pahwa, a fine actor who comes on his own in comic roles and other character roles is pitch-forked as the IB officer heading the negotiations in Kandahar, a job done by today’s NSA – Ajit Doval in real. Pahwa’s laid-back demeanour and his dialogue delivery are a put-off for this role. Kumud Mishra, again a great actor who finds himself part of some good films in neat roles has nothing much to do. The same is the case with Arvind Swamy. Shah should have been cast as the then Minister for External Affairs, Jaswant Singh instead of the role of Brajesh Mishra. Pankaj Kapur comes off quite well as the foreign minister.

The second area where the series falters badly is the screenplay. This is surprising and disappointing for a series where a whole lot of content in the form of articles, news clips, books, interviews etc… related to the IC 814 hijack is available in open domain. Adrain Levy, an acclaimed author and South Asia expert who is the writer of the series muddles up a lot of things in an attempt to hoist a new narrative like blaming Al-Qaeda for the hijack and ignoring the ISI. The whole stretch of negotiations is hushed up towards the end leaving us with the same feeling we get when a TV serial that runs for years gets all of a sudden wound up in one episode.  In reality though, as depicted in different books, the negotiations went on a roller coaster ride till the last day keeping everyone on the edge.

Yes, we could cut the director some slack for taking some cinematic liberties along the way but for a series that is clearly based on real incidents, altering the tonality and narrative is bad making.  The whole Nepal portion where a RAW officer is shown picking up people involved in the hijack seems to be a work of fiction.  The complete absence of even one scene showing the entire crisis management team discussing options in front of them is bewildering. Instead, what we get to see are officers chatting among themselves amidst smoking, drinking cups of Chai and Coffee and entering/exiting cabins. The whole sequence involving the only media house comes across as juvenile.

The dialogues are sharp and the crisp writing shines in a few scenes. For example, the banter between Swamy and Pahwa on the emotions connected to coffee and chai for a South Indian and a North Indian.  These alone are not enough to lift the series which plunges from a high in the 1st episode to a dreary low by the time we come to the final episode.

The social media storm has done the series a tremendous favour as many people who otherwise would not have watched it, binge-watched the same to see where it has gone wrong. IC 814 – The Kandahar Hijack flattered to deceive and ends up being an Okay watch.  It is streaming on Netflix.