A declassified mission carried out in 1971, just before the India-Pakistan war that gave birth to Bangladesh, in which India cleverly blocked its airspace to prevent fighter planes from flying from West Pakistan to East Pakistan (that later became Bangladesh) by staging a fake hijack, has #winner written all over it. That’s the premise of IB71, an espionage thriller that oxymoronically positions itself as “Based on true events but makes no claim of authenticity”. And that’s where the confusion in this film — plot to players, tricky twists to sticky situations — stems right from.
A daredevil infiltration of a Pakistani camp by an Indian agent, though ham-fisted in parts, sets the tone for IB71. The agent in question is Dev Jammwal (Vidyut Jammwal, who also turns producer with this film). When intel reveals to Dev that Pakistan is planning an attack on an unprepared India in 10 days, he comes up with the audacious plan to block Indian airspace to Pakistan. A fake hijack, with an Indian plane landing in Pakistan, would be deemed an ‘act of war’, thus enabling India to put the brakes on its airspace and foil Pakistan’s plans to attack.
To be honest, this is a plot ripe with possibilities, lending itself naturally to an edge-of-the-seat thriller like Argo. In fact, IB71 — from its quick-thinking, daredevil extraction agent to hostages on foreign soil, a chase-and-miss last-minute dash and a boss sitting by the phone and feverishly awaiting an update — has the unmistakable imprint of the Ben Affleck-directed Oscar winner. But IB71 is so contrived and convoluted that nothing in it makes sense after a while. Nor does it arouse the same kind of nail-biting tension that Argo, or even for that matter Akshay Kumar’s Airlift, did.
This is a surprise because the film is directed by Sankalp, who helmed the underwater thriller The Ghazi Attack a few years ago, managing to arrest the viewer’s attention and hold on to it even when the majority of its action took place within a confined space of a submarine. IB71, in contrast, traverses from Delhi to Kashmir to Lahore, but inexplicably assumes the form of an unnecessary jigsaw puzzle which very few viewers will have the patience to piece together. Even if you do, the payoff is far from satisfying.
IB71 also doesn’t have a single subtle bone in its body, with dialogues like “Pakistan agar dafan bhi ho jaaye toh kafan se haath nikaal ke India pe attack karegi” clearly intended to feed the fandom of the current wave of nationalism on steroids. But this is the kind of film, armed with a rock-solid premise that is sadly squandered, that should not have needed to resort to this. And what’s with this new obsession of showing the enemy as nothing but a nation of dimwits?
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