Bharathi Pradhan

As ‘Sone do’ plays sombrely in the background and a dog-soldier is laid to rest, humans-and-doggie moments accompany the opening credits. There are two starkly different tracks. Pet Momo has gone missing. He used to bark in sync with the blowing of the conch at the family puja every day. Young geeky Apu (Mahi Rai) who can solve Rubik’s Cube without looking at it, won’t accept the weak response of SHO Yusuf Ansari (Vijay Mishra) whose police station is full of pictures of missing dogs. Mom (Geeta Agarwal Sharma) has accepted the inevitable when she unties the knot in her saree (tied as a prayer to Lord Hanuman to find Momo) but Apu and his tech-savvy mind won’t give up so soon.

The Chief from Delhi (Mahesh Manjrekar) looks out of the aircraft window at the vast expanse of white Himalayan snow where Indian soldiers fight an impossible war against an enemy who has the advantage of firing at them from a height. He declares it ‘Safed Sagar’, that’s what the Indian Air Force operation will be called when it scrambles to provide air support and cover fire for the men on the ground. Most Indians know that in 1999, while Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif held peace talks with visiting Indian PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, General Musharraf was putting into action a sinister plot in Kargil. Musharraf’s army men dressed like Mujahideen and speaking Pashtu like them, were quietly occupying salient peaks in the Kargil sector, breaking the Simla Accord with India. Inside Pakistan, it was a classic example of the rivalry between Islamabad and Rawalpindi before Musharraf overthrew Sharif and installed martial law.

Let’s get two things out of the way right away. YRF has abandoned its RAW+ISI bhai-bhai theme for a change and Sharvari (as Durga) is not a Pak agent teaming with Indian Sita (Alia Bhatt). In fact, Pakistan is the baddie that’s named this time and India is the one with the valour. Jai Hind to that. With the pre-release misinformation set aside, step into the dark world of demoted army officer Fateh Singh Lakhawat (Bobby Deol) whose pet project Alpha has been officially shut down. In his punishment posting at Cherrapunji, he continues his research to create the ultimate Alpha soldier with infant Sita as his guinea pig.

It’s an age-old but workable mix. Stodgy, old school police inspector Pedro (Arshad Warsi) can’t pronounce fuchsia, 1-2-3-4 is his password and he’s ready to tear his hair when an influencer wants to file an FIR to find her missing followers. It’s a punishment posting for Pedro when a minister on the warpath (Satyadeep Mishra) has him taken off his regular beat to head the cyber cell. Pedro and tech wiz Pritam (Vir Hirani) make an odd pair. But when the minister’s bratty son goes missing, it is Pedro’s traditional sleuthing methods and Pritam’s new-age tech skills that combine to get to the bottom of the crime.

Leave your brains behind, advise some filmmakers. Leave your political correctness also behind, and stop bristling at every perceived slight, would be another advisory for the third instalment of Welcome. Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder (2008), the source material for a story credited to late writer Neeraj Vora, had also come under fire for unabashed comedy over disabilities and coloured faces. So if you are the kind that’s sensitive about say, jibes at high-flown Urdu, stay home. Bengali, Parsee Gujarati and Tamizh have had their turns as comic material. Shouldn’t be a problem if there’s some fun with Urdu but if you’re the touchy type, ghar mein baitho. Because Ahmed Khan and dialogue writer Farhad Samji have a joke all written and ready for every known face in the large star cast.

Cinematically, the first round of applause goes to Kangana Ranaut for not only playing Cama nurse Geeta Madhav Gandhare with professional efficiency but for also not overshadowing her colleagues Girija Oak, Smita Tambe and the others who play her fellow nurses. It is as an ensemble cast should be, screen time shared by all. In real life, a resounding round of applause has been long overdue for the feisty nurses of Cama who worked fearlessly and tirelessly on a night they were not trained for. Nobody was prepared for a terror attack on Mumbai where blood was splattered in restaurants, roads, railway stations, five-star hotels and a hospital.

In Chandigarh, 95-year-old Ishar Singh Grewal alias Kinnu (Naseeruddin Shah) is battling a stroke and dementia; Dadaji is on his deathbed. Amidst his rambling delirium over Martians and Sargodha while making cussed comments at family members taking care of him, the searing pain of 1947 finally stands out. UK-based grandson Nirvair (Diljit Dosanjh), between IT jobs and a failure at standup comedy, leaves behind a relationship (with girlfriend Banita Sandhu) that’s defying definition, and heads to Chandigarh. Between Nirvair’s dogged attempt to decipher grandpa’s delirious but determined hold on a trauma that needs closure, the pangs of separation, the pain of Partition, the horrifying truths families seek to keep buried, emerge with ferocity.

It could’ve turned into a documentary. But mercifully, director Chinmay Mandlekar and his array of co-writers (Ravi Asrani, Saurabh Bharat, Subhendu Bhattacharya, Vipul Amrutlal Shah) use brief touches of humour and bring human, familial elements into the storytelling, to make it an interesting watch. Outside, the financial condition is dire with spiralling prices. Inside, new RBI Governor A Ramanan (Manoj Bajpayee) is bemused by the celebrations to welcome him. There is a lightness in the office atmosphere (like the lift scene) that keep the telling easy and a tough topic like an economic crisis is put across simply, making it comprehensible to the layman. Add to it, the human inspirations that surround Ramanan. Wife Vandita (Madhoo Shah) with her pujas, prayers and positivity, the Deputy Governor (Noushad Mohammed Kunju) who inspires his senior with the line, ‘Fathers don’t quit’ to pull him out of a low mood, an office peon whose borrowings help Ramanan think out of the box.