Much like Ben Affleck's Argo, the newest Akshay Kumar outing Airlift is the celebration of human spirit. It is based on a highly improbable story that just couldn't have been true, had it not been based on a real life event. Though it isn't half as phenomenal as the former, Airlift, nevertheless, is a novel, earnest and compelling attempt at pressing every patriotic button on the remote and jerk out a tear or two this Republic Day.
The herculean task of evacuating 1,70,000 Indians out of war-torn Kuwait during the Gulf War was executed single-handedly by a man named Ranjit Katyal (played by Akshay) in this story. Akshay quits his larger-than-life image to settle for being the messiah of the underdog and manages to lure us with his simplicity. The same cannot be said about the screenplay that despite being rooted in raw, powerful emotions is never half as good as it was touted to be. Gritty in parts and nail-biting surely, Raja Krishna Menon's film is an over simplistic account that never rings true. Though the actors give us enough and more to cheer for, the film manages to engage only in parts.
