Lakshya

One supposes that all you need to do to make a GOOD film in Bollywood, is break all stereotypes. It's that simple. Tweak that dance-around-the-tree routine a little bit,place the tear-jerker scenes at some point BEFORE the climax, give all songs in the film a proper context - and you're there. Farhan Akhtar, director of Lakshya did this, and a little bit more to make a truly watchable film.

A word about Lakshya - as a genre film first. What is it? A war classic on the 1999 Kargil struggle? Or is it simply the tale of a guy letting his destiny choose him. I think it's the latter. Lakshya is simply too thin on war details to be called a war film. Nor does it pretend to be, at any time. I'm sure most people will agree, no one really knows what happened during the Kargil struggle in the first place. And the army for sure, wouldn't want all the details leaked out.(Ironically Lakshya is more impressive when it's talking about war than the other big bannerflicks we're seen recently - LOC Kargil and Border being cases in point)

Karan, (Hrithik Roshan) is goofy, floppy haired and simplistic - who knows little about what he wants out of life. But his honest and pure heart earns him the love of Romi, (essayed by Priety Zinta) who's focussed, ambitious, impatient and bubbly. Karan applies to the army on a whim and makes it to the Indian Military Academy. But he deserts in just 4 days. However, eye-opening reactions from Romi and Karan's father convince him to go back and prove a point. Which he does, by passing out on top of the class and getting posted to Kargil. Meanwhile, Priety has got that dream job and is a journalist/anchor. She meets a multinational yuppie and gets engaged to him. This is when war breaks out, and the movie's terrain changes - and the climactic scenes are rounded off in thundering fashion.

Nothing too hot in the scripting. But we know Farhan Akhtar doesn't need a ground-breaking script, don't we? Give him something decent - and he'll turn it into something that will break frontiers in Bollywood, like he did with Dil Chahta Hai. Akhtar was very young when he made that film about India's youth coming into their own. And in Lakshya it's almost like the characters in Dil Chahta Hai go one step further to to confront their destiny.
One can be forgiven for thinking these two films loosely chronicle Farhan Akhtar's own rise. What then, we wonder, would his THIRD film like?

One thing for sure - if films like Lakshya are getting more and more accepted, and I'm sure they are, what will become of Bollywood? All those Rajshri films types in their creaky Prabhadevi offices in Mumbai had better watch out.