IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack Review: Authentic and to the point, Vijay Varma starrer is as good a web series as any we have seen this year
A hijacked Indian Airlines plane’s captain unclogs a toilet pipe. The commuters cheer. The man responds, “There’s no need to applaud me; I was just doing my duty.” Has there ever been a Bollywood rescue drama protagonist who was so casually humble? However, not much of IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack is conventional, except from its genre.
The essence and extent of the IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack story are determined by the pilot’s, the flight attendants’, and a bevy of intelligence officers, bureaucrats, and an external affairs minister’s response to the terrifying situation. It adds an instant grip to the edgy and taut six-episode Netflix series based on real-life events.
In recent years, Indian film enthusiasts have witnessed a number of hijack thrillers, such as an overly planned and messy fictionalized Malayalam action film starring Amitabh Bachchan and Mohanlal (Kandahar, 2010) Anubhav Sinha, director and co-creator of The Kandahar Hijack, lets the plane take off on its own course.
Nobody pushes the series in that direction more than Captain Sharan Dev (Vijay Varma). With his creative conception and development, he infuses a new meaning to the concept of heroism. By doing this, he releases the program from limiting genre norms.
Varma doesn’t speak tough like Bell Bottom’s Akshay Kumar or leap into action like Yodha’s Sidharth Malhotra. The decisions the character takes test his actual resolve as a man and a pilot and lead to life-threatening confrontations instead of providing fleeting thrills.
The captain shows remarkable bravery and composure in the face of extreme danger and provocation when, on Christmas eve 1999, his aircraft, which was traveling from Kathmandu to Delhi, is hijacked by five masked terrorists and forced to travel to Amritsar, Lahore, Dubai, and ultimately Kandahar, Afghanistan, with a rapidly running fuel tank.
For a man who has been educated to remain composed under pressure, it’s all part of his daily job. Unfortunately, the ordeal takes a full week for him and the restless crew. There are 180 passengers under Captain Dev’s supervision. His first concern is to save their lives.
The hijackers get more and more restless. The passengers lose their patience as they become panicked. And as agony turns into torture, the team starts to falter. Still, the show doesn’t stop with the predicament of the passengers. It also takes into account the furious debates started by the crisis management team in Delhi’s corridors of power and the actions of two reporters covering the narrative that is always changing in a newsroom.
The main task facing the research and writing team would have been to infuse the plot with dramatic intensity and elements of surprise. They meet the challenge head-on.IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack maintains a delicate equilibrium between the real and the imagined, the tangible and the hypothetical, and the optimistic and the speculative, all while avoiding allowing the fictional to overpower the real.
The suspenseful highwire thriller never lets up. It intensifies a number of disputes and hot spots. These are inherent in the air battle and in the conversations between Indian officials and the hijackers backed by the ISI leading up to the big showdown. They range from the interpersonal to the geopolitical, from the immediate to the historical.
The show doesn’t overdo embellishments; instead, it shows things as they happen. The situation’s gravity and “reality” are emphasized by intermittent news footage snippets, with a narrator providing background on occasion.
The public is aware of the main events that took place on board the endangered airplane 25 years ago, particularly after reading the pilot’s documented first-hand narrative.
In his streaming debut, Sinha is in charge of a writing team that also includes British writer Adrian Levy (who shares narrative credit with co-creator Trishant Srivastava of Jamtara: Sabka Number Ayega on Netflix) and Srivastava. They present a performance that is never constrained by the formula of a major Hindi film.
There is unavoidably a lot of visual effects in the series. Ewan Mulligan and Ravi Kiran Ayyagari’s camerawork is remarkably excellent, and the drama is brought to life by unexpected, terrifying bursts of suspenseful action and suspense. Nonetheless, the show has a carefully crafted, almost documentary feel.
The main inspiration for IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack, which was filmed in Mumbai, Nepal, and Jordan, is Captain Devi Sharan’s book Flight to Fear. Anil Sharma’s book IA’s Terror Trail, which describes 16 incidents of Indian airplane hijacking from the early 1970s to the late 1990s, provided extra information for the script.
In addition to the positive effects that the series’ strong research and storyline have, IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack is made exceptionally memorable by an outstanding ensemble cast. There are more than 100 performers in the performance, many of whom are relatively unknown, including the actors who portray the passengers in the plane. But each of them adds something to make the drama more impactful.
As a man whose planned year-end vacation with his wife and daughter is derailed by the hijacking, Vijay Varma ‘pilots’ the show. The writer uses a characterization technique called “subdued intensity” to communicate perseverance instead of ostentatious bravado.
Patralekhaa is amazing as flight attendant Indrani, whose internal conflict is made worse by having to leave her sick father at home. Although she is not the only female character in the series, she is almost as much a part of the action as the majority of the other major characters.
The emotionally taxing personal elements that the show incorporates into the professional disasters that the pilot and the air hostess encounter while performing their duties are a major source of revenue.
In the film, Dia Mirza portrays a newspaper editor who values prudence. Amrita Puri is portrayed as an insatiable journalist. The two collaborate closely and frequently cross paths with one another over work-related issues. Their divergent strategies colliding gives the program a new depth.
Without its impressive ensemble of seasoned actors, including Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Arvind Swamy, Kumud Mishra, and Manoj Pahwa, IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack would not be half the series it is today. They significantly increase the show’s profundity and impact.
The camera pans around the subjects. They keep one another in their sights. They compete with opposing viewpoints that highlight differences between departments. Watching these former masters of their art individually and collectively is a treat.
Kanwaljit Singh, Yashpal Sharma, Sushant Singh and Dibyendu Bhattacharya are somewhat underutilised, which is perhaps unavoidable in a miniseries with a wide array of characters vying for attention. But there is little else in IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack that one can find fault with.