Skip to content 
Search

Latest Stories

Is Uri: The Surgical Strike a cursed film?

Is Uri: The Surgical Strike a cursed film?

WHEN Uri: The Surgical Strike was released in 2019 it became a huge blockbuster success. In terms of budget versus return, the fictional account of India’s retaliation to Pakistan militants launching a deadly attack in 2016, became one of the highest profit-making movies of all time.

Almost five years later, the award-winning hit seems to have cursed the three key people connected to it. The film’s writer-director Aditya Dhar started working on his high profile follow up The Immortal Ashwatthama, but the mythological superhero adventure headlined by Uri: The Surgical Strike lead star Vicky Kaushal soon collapsed.


Budgets spiralling out of control led to The Immortal Ashwatthama being shelved before it commenced shooting, which means that despite winning multiple awards for his directorial debut, Dhar is still waiting for a second film. It is now turning into one of the biggest gaps between an acclaimed debut and a follow up. This is one of many projects that have prevented Kaushal from progressing to leading man material.

His movies released as a leading man since then like Bhoot – Part One: The Haunted Ship, Govinda Naam Mera and The Great Indian Family have been major failures. His film Sardar Udham won awards but was largely overrated and dumped straight onto a streaming site.

Lead Sam Bahadur 907 Sam Bahadur

Perhaps, the most cursed has been the movie’s producer Ronnie Screwvala because he has been on a dramatic downward spiral. The clueless producer tried to replicate the anti-Pakistan rhetoric of Uri: The Surgical Strike, but that has backfired multiple times.

His decidedly average period war films Mission Majnu and Pippa dealt with India battling the old enemy, but both were dumped straight onto a streaming site because the appetite just wasn’t there for a cinema release. The average movies generated very little interest. There have been rumours that the recent release Pippa was sold at a huge financial loss to Amazon Prime.

Screwvala’s other anti-Pakistan film Tejas became a spectacular failure when it was released in October. When all the calculations are done, the Kangana Ranaut air force drama will be one of this year’s biggest film failures. After these three terrible cross-border war movies, the producer is hoping to turn things around with soon to be released film Sam Bahadur, which is due in cinemas on December 1. But that looks like more of the same – it is another cross border war movie and it has Kaushal portraying a real life Indian super soldier. The trailer received an average response, despite being directed by acclaimed filmmaker Meghna Gulzar.

Lead ronnie Screwvala Profile Ronnie Screwvala

If by some miracle the army movie does turn out to be good, it has shot itself in the foot by releasing on the same day as hotly anticipated blockbuster Animal.

It is an astonishingly bad decision considering Animal has a top drawer director and has a red-hot cast led up by massively popular Bollywood star Ranbir Kapoor. It is also a full-throttled action movie, which is the hottest genre in Hindi cinema right now after the big success of Pathaan and Jawaan.

If, as expected, Sam Bahadur fails at the box office, it will be four army movies in a row produced by Screwvala that have failed to replicate the success of Uri: The Surgical Strike, which still seems to be cursing key people associated with it.

More For You

Comment: Why Old Trafford Test is missed chance to talk trade

Keir Starmer (left) and Narendra Modi will sign the UK-India trade deal during the latter's two-day visit to UK

Comment: Why Old Trafford Test is missed chance to talk trade

PRIME MINISTER Keir Starmer has been more sure-footed on the world stage than at home in his first year in office, but is sensitive to the wrong-headed charge that he spends too much time abroad.

So, this will be a week when world leaders come to him, with fleeting visits from both Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and US president Donald Trump, touring his golf courses in Scotland before his formal state visit in September. The main purpose of Modi’s two-day stopover is to sign the India-UK trade deal, agreed in May, but overshadowed then by the escalation of conflict between India and Pakistan.

Keep ReadingShow less
Air India crash

Investigators at the site of the Air India crash in Ahmedabad on June 13

‘Too soon to blame Air India pilots for crash’

SOME western papers have been too quick to suggest pilot error or sabotage in the Air India crash in Ahmedabad last month.

This is based on a couple of lines in the preliminary report on the crash: “In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Comment: Last summer’s riots could erupt again without sustained action on cohesion

FILE PHOTO: Riot police hold back protesters near a burning police vehicle in Southport, England

Getty Images

Comment: Last summer’s riots could erupt again without sustained action on cohesion

Could this long, hot summer see violence like last year’s riots erupt again? It surely could. That may depend on some trigger event – though the way in which the tragic murders of Southport were used to mobilise inchoate rage, targeting asylum seekers and Muslims, showed how tenuous such a link can be. There has already been unrest again in Ballymena this summer. Northern Ireland saw more sustained violence, yet fewer prosecutions than anywhere in England last summer.

"We must not wait for more riots to happen" says Kelly Fowler, director of Belong, who co-publish a new report, ‘The State of Us’, this week with British Future. The new research provides a sober and authoritative guide to the condition of cohesion in Britain. A cocktail of economic pessimism, declining trust in institutions and the febrile tinderbox of social media present major challenges. Trust in political institutions has rarely been lower – yet there is public frustration too with an angry politics which amplifies division.

Keep ReadingShow less
The real challenge isn’t having more parties, but governing a divided nation

Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn

Getty Images

The real challenge isn’t having more parties, but governing a divided nation

It is a truth universally acknowledged that voters are dissatisfied with the political choices on offer - so must they be in want of new parties too? A proliferation of start-ups showed how tricky political match-making can be. Zarah Sultana took Jeremy Corbyn by surprise by announcing they will co-lead a new left party. Two of Nigel Farage’s exes announced separate political initiatives to challenge Reform from its right, with the leader of London’s Conservatives lending her voice to Rupert Lowe’s revival of the politics of repatriation.

Corbyn and Sultana are from different generations. He had been an MP for a decade by the time she was born. For Sultana’s allies, this intergenerational element is a core case for the joint leadership. But the communications clash suggests friction ahead. After his allies could not persuade Sultana to retract her announcement, Corbyn welcomed her decision to leave Labour, saying ‘negotiations continue’ over the structure and leadership of a new party. It will seek to link MPs elected as pro-Gaza independents with other strands of the left outside Labour.

Keep ReadingShow less
Amol Rajan confronts loss along the Ganges

Amol Rajan at Prayagraj

Amol Rajan confronts loss along the Ganges

ONE reason I watched the BBC documentary Amol Rajan Goes to the Ganges with particular interest was because I have been wondering what to do with the ashes of my uncle, who died in August last year. His funeral, like that of his wife, was half Christian and half Hindu, as he had wished. But he left no instructions about his ashes.

Sooner or later, this is a question that every Hindu family in the UK will have to face, since it has been more than half a century since the first generation of Indian immigrants began arriving in this country. Amol admits he found it difficult to cope with the loss of his father, who died aged 76 three years ago. His ashes were scattered in the Thames.

Keep ReadingShow less