Neerja

Cast: Sonam Kapoor, Shekhar Ravjiani, Shabana Azmi

Rated: 8/10

She died 30 years ago and in extremely frightful circumstances.  Returned from a Delhi-Karachi-Franfurt-New York hopping flight dead — body riddled with bullets, killed in the crossfire between the hijackers of her Pan Am flight and commandos.

Chief Pursur Neerja Bhanot would have celebrated her 24th birthday a few days later that fateful September but that was not to be. She died in harness, trying to save the lives of the 300 plus other passengers.

A cinematic tribute to this braveheart would have been a given much, much earlier but it took the film industry three decades to unfold this tale of singular courage.

However, after sitting through the film, I would say ‘better late than never’. For, it is a stunning film, mounted on a stunning performance by the much derided Sonam Kapoor. Sonam is Neerja and she lives and dies in her skin.

Quite an achievement from a pretty star child who never really was considered an actor of any worth. Till she played Neerja and put every emotion into an apt groove. The fear, the impending doom, the worry, the stunned blankness and finally the will to be courageous — Sonam has portrayed the entire soiree of that traumatic incident in full flow. Without doubt, this is, by far, Sonam Kapoor’s best role ever and she walks away with the film rightly so.

Not that Shabana Azmi, who plays her traumatised mother, is any less. But this is Sonam’s film — and Neerja’s too, who finally gets her due from Bollywood.

Director Ram Madhvani has kept the issue as he should have — starkly real, to the point, taut and totally as it must have happened. It’s a relief that not much cinematic liberty has been taken to tell Neerja’s brave story and that’s why this film is one that should not be missed at any cost.

The entire hijack drama and the aftermath is shot in a crescendo of drama and Madhvani is excellent in keeping the emotional roller-coaster in top gear for most part of this well-meaning film.

Neerja was a brave girl and it is a beautiful film that acknowledges it all these three decades later.