Ikkis Review: A Moving War Drama With An Endearing Dharmendra & Impactful Agastya Nanda

Title: Ikkis

Cast: Agastya Nanda, Dharmendra, Jaideep Ahlawat, Asrani, Simar Bhatia

Director: Sriram Raghavan

Where: In theaters near you

Rating: 3.5 stars

Ikkis is a war drama based on the true story of Second Lieutenant Arun Khetarpal, India’s youngest Param Vir Chakra awardee, who laid down his life at the age of 21 in the 1971 India–Pakistan War during the Battle of Basantar.

Actors’ Performances

Ikkis switches between the present (just after the Kargil War, post-1999), when Brigadier ML Khetarpal, Arun’s father, played by Dharmendra, visits Pakistan to meet Brigadier Khwaja Mohammed Naseer of the Pakistan Army, played by Jaideep Ahlawat, and 1971, during the war.

The movie makes you emotional on various occasions, a majority of them when Dharmendra is on screen. I don’t know whether to call this his best performance or to give credit to Sriram Raghavan for using him in a manner in which, at least in my experience, I haven't seen him utilized this well. Or is it a combination of both of these?

Rahul Dev plays the role of the stoic army man in a way that makes you feel he might as well be an army man.

Sikander Kher has a roughly 60-second intro scene, which is excellent because of its mix of surprise and humour.

Seeing Asrani in one of his last cinematic roles was a pleasant surprise, and once again, the way Raghavan has used him in a cameo is just so apt.

It must be mentioned, regarding director Sriram Raghavan, that we have a lot of patriotic, army-based films which regularly go a bit over the top. In this case, however, he does not let that happen. This is where I would like to talk about Agastya. I went into the hall with absolutely zero expectations regarding his performance. However, whether it was emotion, anger, or romance, he delivers on all fronts.

A section of the audience was applauding when Dharmendra first comes on screen, even before he had said his dialogue. I would like to mention here that even if you were someone seeing Dharmendra for literally the first time in this movie, you would have given that same kind of applause after witnessing his entire performance. The scene where my sprinklers totally lost control is when he is in Pakistan, visiting the old haveli where he used to stay with his family pre-Partition. In the middle of having dinner with the current occupants, an ex-Pakistan Army man (Deepak Dobriyal) confronts him and says that he had lost a leg during the war. And before Dharmendra even delivers his dialogue—saying that while the man has lost a part of his body, he lost his son—and hugs him, the tear ducts do their job.

Simar Bhatia, who plays Agastya’s love interest, is such a refreshing change from some of the actresses in the last year whose social media antics and manufactured photo opportunities we have been bombarded with. Let’s just say that without an iota of doubt, one can say that she is a great actress and someone to watch out for in the future. Jaideep Ahlawat—and I’ve said this before, and I think I’ll probably be saying this again in the future—literally has the quality of getting into whatever role he is given beautifully.

Coming back to Raghavan, he manages to show the crucial parts of army training, and the bonds and frictions that can take place between individuals, especially when someone has been chosen to be a leader for a competition, and how one man’s ambition and misplacement of priorities can lead to wrong decisions.

Music

Never did I feel that the music during the war scenes was overdone. The tempo for each moment—whether it is the tank fights, the emotionally charged instances, or any other—adds to the storytelling, never venturing into the melodramatic zone.

Final Verdict

In my opinion, the movie is a must-watch because it’s about the true story of the bravery of a 21-year-old who sacrificed his life for the nation, and cinematically, it has been done justice.