This fore-knowledge actually heightens our involvement and grief. The fact that we know how this heart-in-the-mouth drama will pan out doesn’t any way diminish our insurmountable anxiety, as four rabid Palestinians (played by impeccably cast actors) take over the flight from which our heroine will never return. From the moment the genial Neerja enters the flight (destined to be her last journey), I felt I was travelling with her, and all the crew members and passengers. The detailing of the PanAm flight is so exact (and full marks to production designer Aparna Sud), I didn’t for a moment feel I was on a film set. The entire nightmarish drama unfolds on the runway on a grounded aircraft. Turbulent weather is not quite the problem in this hijack drama (which is not really just that, but a lot LOT, more). Neerja is a film that wears its excellence casually, like a beautifully knit garment thrown on for a stroll in a windy park. Or maybe fanatical is not a word we ought to use, considering.ġ0 minutes into the film, when we see Neerja dancing to Rajesh Khanna’s ‘Bye Bye Miss Goodnight’ from the film Premnagar, I wanted to believe in the reality about Neerja Bhanot that director Ram Madhvani and his ingenious writer Saiwyn Quadras has so diligently and faultlessly put across, immortalizing the memory of the slain braveheart even while giving Indian cinema yet another example of its growing maturity. In the film version of her life, the zany feisty and exceptionally courageous (as we soon discover) Neerja Bhanot is a fanatical Rajesh Khanna fan. Was Neerja Bhanot, the airhostess who on 5 September 1986 perished while trying to save lives in a hijacked aircraft, really a Rajesh Khanna fan?
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