Director: Tinu Suresh Desai
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Ravi Kishan, Jameel Khan, Kumud Mishra, Pawan Malhotra, Parineeti Chopra (in a special appearance) and others
Where: In theatres near you
Rating: 3 stars
Filmmaker Tinu Suresh Desai got recognition when he was saved by Akshay Kumar’s heroism in Rustom released in 2016, however, Tinu tries his hands with a tacky horror film 1920 London but falls miserably even though the franchise savours the two-tier cities petty well. Akshay has been a messiah for several filmmakers and so does for Tinu probably.
Earlier called Capsule Gill, Tinu brings a film that is India’s first-ever coal mine rescue project based on the real-life incident that occurred in 1989 at Raniganj, West Bengal, India. Akshay plays the titular role of Jaswant Singh Gill— an IIT engineer, in Dhanbad, who saved the lives of 65 coal miners trapped underground due to a mishap.
Tinu manages to cast an entire set of good artists in one film— Ravi Kishan, Jameel Khan, Kumud Mishra, Pawan Malhotra, Virendra Saxena, Varun Badola, Anant Mahadevan, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Arif Zakaria, Rajesh Sharma— one would name it and you will find them in some corner of the canvas. They all contributed a lot to the film but barring Ravi, Kumud, and Jameel, no one’s really visible prominently.
Nirdosh (Parineeti) plays a devoted pregnant wife of ‘Gill Sahab as she fondly calls Akshay throughout the film but she offers only a 10-minute role including two song appearances in a 2-hour 18-minute film. ‘It is certainly Kesari 2.0’
Tinu’s first half is cringe, lousy, scattered, and has unpleasant VFX and in fact, it is the refurbished version of any glorified biopic that Akshay Kumar does. Although, an actor of his stature, who believes in his image strengthening by being a part of unheard stories of valour and patriotism, Tinu’s mission of making him a hero yet again prevails only in the second half.
On the contrary, Tinu impresses with his second half with utmost determination— telling a story of coal mining and adding thriller and drama to it isn’t an easy task for any storyteller. Wonder, how he and Akshay are tailor-made for each other.
Akshay tried too hard to sail through the box office with his pro-agenda-based films in the recent past but all in vain. But, Mission Raniganj comes surely as a rescue for him. Mission Raniganj is more of a Mission Akki but palatable, suitable in a somewhat filmy way.
You can’t ignore the larger-than-life Akshay Kumar in this one too but somewhere in this— one can’t ignore the core idea of the film ideally. Akshay was Rustom then and now is Gill but Tinu has evolved into a better director but still has a long way to go.
