badaboom-2

The Rookie is a superb show, but this episode was truly awful. Perhaps there were behind-the-scenes issues, due to the pandemic, that forced them to whip something up in a hurry. That's the feeling you get from the cringey script. Sadly, the result was the worst episode of this series - by a long way.

I saw this movie with some Indian friends on Christmas Day. The quick summary of this movie is MUST AVOID. JP Dutta wrote, directed, produced and edited this movie and did none of these jobs well.

The movie tells the story of the attempt by Pakistan in 1999 to capture part of the disputed region of Kashmir from India. Supposedly based on fact, you get a hint from this movie of the difficulty the Indian army had in recapturing the area from the Pakistani troops - who occupied the high ground. But instead of telling what must have been a compelling and heroic story, all this movie does is make the Indian military look laughable and stupid, which I know is not true.

I watched this movie with an almost completely Indian audience, who were very patriotic and clearly wanted to like this movie, but also found themselves laughing at scenes that weren't meant to be funny.

The script was absolutely abysmal. It gave the impression that Mr Dutta knows nothing about how an army operates and was using bad war movies for reference. The result is a script that is brainless and repetitive.

The acting from most of the principals was not stellar, but considering the script they were given, I find it hard to criticise them too much. As for the supporting cast, all I can say is that I hope they were amateurs.

The editing was also pretty bad. It was pretty hard to follow what was going on for a lot of the time, and music would abruptly end at scene changes.

Good things: The cinematography was pretty good, although it was hurt a little by the fact that the movie didn't appear to be colour corrected (the colour balance often varied significantly within scenes). Also, the few songs that were in the movie were quite enjoyable - for the first half a dozen or so verses at least. Unfortunately they went on a LOT longer than they should have.

And the worst crime of all? This mess is FOUR HOURS LONG. There is enough here that a good editor could almost squeeze a good 1.5 - 2 hour movie out of what was shot. Sadly, a good editor was not working on this movie.

Has the distinction (IMHO) of being the TV show with the best ever theme music. Track it down on the net if you haven't heard it.

Oh, and it was a great detective show also.