Mission Raniganj Review - The Great Bharat Rescue Spoof

Mission Raniganj Review: Tinu Suresh Desai reunites with Akshay Kumar for a heroic tale, "Mission Raniganj". Based on the 1989 Raniganj Coalfields' rescue operation, Mission Raniganj: The Great Bharat Rescue is a thrilling and freaking heroic tale indeed, but gone in the wrong hands and with the wrong vision. The identical behaviour of the director's execution to make a jingoistic disaster movie is clearly visible, and that's what spoils a great story. Such stories based on true events aren't known to today's generation. Back in time, we had a fine attempt like Kaala Patthar, and even before that, Hollywood made several flicks in the 1940s and 1950s—even though not all were officially based on true events. British cinema made a superb noir like "The Stars Look Down" in 1940, and the next year, the most-discussed Oscar-winning classic "How Green Was My Valley" (1941) had its major climax conflict based on the same subject. If you see those films even today, Mission Raniganj will look outdated and melodramatic compared to them. That's how faltered filmmaking is here. MR is a wannabe Great Bharat Rescue turned into a low-grade spoof.The film is based on Jaswant Singh Gill (Akshay Kumar), a brave and diligent mining engineer from IIT Dhanbad who rescued 65 trapped miners at the Raniganj Coalfields in 1989. Jaswant is in Bengal for a family function and is called for help from his senior, Mr. Ujjwal (Kumud Mishra). While one of the local politicians and the majority of residents prefer Mr. Sen (Dibyendu Bhattacharya) to lead the rescue operation, Ujjwal puts his vote in Gill's favour. Gill has a different plan, much tougher and impossible, but much smarter than Sen. While Sen attempts to forfeit the opponent's mission with dirty tricks, Gill and his companions, who are worried about the lives of 71 miners, give everything to save them. But is it going to be that easy?Deepak Kingrani has certainly written a bad script for a real heroic tale like Gill's. In the era of remakes and sequels, the audience needs original content, and this was surely a perfect story. However, the screenplay fails to deal with the conflict in a mature way. It's not that the subject is bad; it's the storyline, line-up of events, and presentation that go wrong. A true story about rescue must be theoretically smart and nuanced, as people expect a lot of brainstorming while seeing such stuff. Mission Raniganj is more like your 80s drama, where characters' behaviour is histrionic and extremely dramatic. We all know the rescue and the suspense around it must go to the last moment, but again, it's too mainstream. That's one fact. We have been through hundreds of films where a last-minute twist makes things happy, but should we stick to it in 2023? If the answer is clearly NO, then you know Mission Raniganj is not a film for 2023's audiences, who have evolved themselves during the pandemic with a lot of foreign content on OTT. The second thing is that MR is not a mass-driven flick, yet it pretends to be one with every major conflict, be it conspiracies, conversations, extreme reactions, or the overall treatment given to the whole operation.Akshay Kumar, as Gill, looks a bit off track and exhausted. The role didn't need any long-term dedication or transformation, so it was quite easy for the man who has done more than 150 films in his career. Yet, the flow wasn't smooth. Some scenes did work from his end; some went wrong. Overall, it was a mixed dish from him. Parineeti Chopra's screentime is close to nothing except a song, and she makes the perfect, devoted, and honest wife of a daring husband. The start was great for Kumud Mishra, but then he slipped down in the second half. That argument scene between him and D. Bhattacharya showed that even a good actor can do badly with a certain scene and a certain accent. Dibyendu is a highly talented fella, and we have all witnessed it over the years. Sadly, MR has nothing for him. Ravi Kishan, Pavan Malhotra, Varun Badola, Rajesh Sharma, Virendra Saxena, Saanand Verma, Shishir Sharma, and others have done okay in the supporting roles.The VFX work for Mission Raniganj is poor. The flood scenes look terrible on the big screen, as they look more like animation than graphic visual effects. Also, the production design isn't very attractive. The structure of the coal mine, the colour gradient, and the properties should have been more accurate than this. One or two songs have beats but aren't hit material. This wasn't a song-oriented film, but it would have been good to have a few hit numbers. 1920 London, Rustom, and Mission Raniganj, Tinu Desai has been versatile, but the graph of his direction skills didn't show any increase. Rustom was driven by a merger of 2–3 genres, which made people overlook many flaws. Mission Raniganj didn't have any backup, so the entire focus was on one thing, and that went wrong. Desai's presentation is highly massy, which is contrary to the main theme. I saw people clapping at 2-3 scenes, and the biggest cheer came for the climax scene. But for me, it wasn't enough to define the entire film. Overall, it was a good attempt that couldn't see its potential and went too mainstream with its commercial vision.