Review on the film Madras Café *
We again have a film related
to national security and Covert operations of India’s external agency RA&W,
in which John Abraham plays the role of an Indian Army officer who is assigned
task of breaking the backbone of the Tamil Separatist in Sri Lanka by India’s
Research Analysis Wing. Actually to have a film on the subject was expected as
well as essential because unlike today, things were different in the 90s, we
did not have a powerful 24/7 media then and the people of the country woke up
on 22/05/1991 with a shock to know that ex Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was
assassinated in a powerful blast at Sriperumbudur
in Chennai. The film is about the armed civil war between the Sinhalese Sri
Lankan government and the separatist Tamils and how it impacted India due to
influx of Tamil refugees and subsequently forcing the Prime Minister to
intervene and send a peace keeping force to Sri Lanka with a motive to end the
war. The film is about Vikram Singh Played by John Abraham who is assigned the
task by Raw chief (played by siddharth Basu) to handle its operations in Sri Lanka,
it is about how the mission fails due to betrayal by a senior Raw official. Nargis
Fakri plays the role of a war Correspondent who through her sources helps
Vikram in getting vital information. The only technical part that is shown in
the film is decoding of calls that are intercepts, through which they come to
know about a possible attack on the ex Prime Minister, that’s why I feel that
reviewing the film is difficult for any critic, probably an ex army officer or
a RAW official would have been the right person to judge the film, the story
line is a bit confused and fails to create interest, it gives a clear
indication that enough research was not done, the possible reason why Rajiv
Gandhi was killed is not Known because in 2006 Anton Balasingham a close
confidant of V Prabhakaran had described the Killing of Rajiv Gandhi a great
tragedy and they regret their action, so the possible threat that LTTE had from
Rajiv Gandhi was the success of operation cactus launched by the Indian army which
foiled the attempt of a coup in Maldives in which a smaller Tamil separatist
outfit People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam was involved, so
they could have shown that as a motive behind the assassination. The film maker
could have shown how the suicide bomber was brain washed and the political
scenario in Sri Lanka which was struggling due to the civil war but still was
not happy with India’s interference. The only thing the film maker focused on
was the D Day that was 21/05/1991 the day Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated and the
regret of the character Vikram Singh for failing in saving the life of the
Prime Minister. The media Knows that John Abraham has a crush on Priyanka
Gandhi probably he made a film on her father’s assassination to get her
attention.
