Film – Tejas
Writer – Director Sarvesh Mehra
Actors – Kangana Ranaut, Anshul Chauhan, Veena Nair,
Tejas tells the story of Tejas Gill played by Kangana Ranaut who loses every single person she loves in the 26/11 attacks at the Leopold cafe. An ambitious and rainy girl who is sort of a prodigy at the Air Force training academy and has a right future ahead of her. She is young, vibrant and as all the qualities required of a girl who is ready to take on the world!
And then suddenly all hell breaks lose as her entire family is killed at Mumi’s Leopold Cafe during a jolly family night out and since then things have een differently with her. That was an event in her life that was responsible in shaping her into the Tejas she is presently and the beliefs she has about terrorism that makes it personal to her. As she aggressively yet confidently says, “Terrorism is personal to me aur woh sa ke liye personal hona chahiye to hi Terrorism ko is duniya se ukhaad ke pheka jaa sakta hai.”
She then becomes the team lead for operation Tejas which is essentially a rescue mission for an undercover soldier who posed as an engineer ut eventually is captured by the Pakistan army and to know what happens thereafter, you have to see the film in your nearest theatres.
Writer director Sarwesh Mewara as done a swell job in portraying the character of Tejas and the gradual increase in the graph of her character is noticeable. The non-linear narrative does that trick and the understanding of the workings of Tejas’s mind is palpable. Having said that, the entry of Kangana’s Tejas in the film is a tad it cheesy. Even though Kangana has a lovely gait and it looks fabulous as she runs, such a film doesn’t quite call for that typical Bollywood masala type her enty. Somewhere it looks and feels off.
There were a few glitches in the shots as well. For instance, in one of the shots that has Varun Mitra crooning to the crowd. There is a sargam in the song. While singing, Varun leaves the mike and moves towards the bandmates playing, mind you he doesn’t have any wireless mike on him, therefore I wonder how was his voice audible even then?! Keeping all these filming glitches aside, Tejas does amaze viewers.
Kangana Ranaut does it again with her performance and she is just too good! She has excelled in whatever role she played, an exception being Dhaakad, which was a disaster. However the writer and the director of the film are to be blamed for that. Kangana is back in her game with Tejas and how. She is a solid actor and I feel she should make sure that se focusses on that aspect always which will hone her craft. It is always good to be ambitious and graduate towards the other arenas of filmmaking ut when one tends to be part of everything that when the mess happens more often than not.
In the film Kangana is all-pervading, there is barely anyone else in the game other than her and that too is a it of a drawback. Everything cannot be about just one person. Whatever said and done, when it comes to a film like this one, there is nothing else to be noted. The film belongs to the leading lady. The scenes from just before the interval and post that were written in a very taut manner and they were filmed too in a similar way. The background music used was impactful and it did play a very important part in imparting the feeling every scene was meant to wring out from the viewer.
All in all a must watch film and deserves all the applause.
