Review of ‘Red Alert - The War Within’

By Abhijit Bangal, 19th Feb 2012 | Follow this author | RSS Feed | Short URL http://nut.bz/1bu359s6/
Posted in Wikinut>Reviews>Film & TV>Action

It is a review of one of the best Bollywood films in recent times.

The Review

Characters:
Narasimha played by Suniel Shetty
Others:
Naseeruddin Shah, Sameera Reddy, Bhagyashree and Ashish Vidyarthi
Director:
Anant Mahadevan

Tagged as ‘the Maoists Drama’ ‘Red Alert - The War Within’ is based on a true story. There are a lot of true Maoist stories so to say. This one is one of those many stories having a lot of depth and truth in it. In fact, there are a lot of dialogues in the film those have been lifted as they originally were. According to the director Anant Mahadevan, he and his writers’ teams have downloaded loads of interviews from the Internet of the real life Maoists and the police.
This film is a real life story of a farmer who was one of many innocent victims of the Maoist movements.
Narasimha (Suniel Shetty) plays a poor farm laborer. Now, ‘Red Alert - The War Within’, even though is a real life film, shows flashes of a typical Bollywood film. The protagonist is a poor chap, so poor that he does not own even a plot of land. Secondly, he has children who are bright but lack funds for education. Narasimha desperately wants money so that he could give his children quality education. His needs carry him towards the Maoists where he lands himself a job of a cook.
He smells evil and gets drawn towards vices. Weapon handling, shooting and kidnapping become the order of the day for Narasimha. The once honest farm laborer has left the body ages ago and the poverty that he is in, is mostly responsible for his condition and so are his dreams accountable. Days go by there is no change in Narasimha’s destiny or situation. One even, though, changes Narasimha’s life topsy-turvy. He gets into conflict with one group leader (Ashish Vidyarthi) and life does not remain the same again. Narasimha is sandwiched between the law and the vices and his wrong doings.

The director has put forth his views quite clearly. According to him, the film tries to portray neutral views about the conflicts between the Government and the Maoists. Going further into the details, Anant Mahadevan feels that both the Government and the Maoists are to be equally responsible for the current state in which they find themselves.
The director has taken enough honest efforts to put forth the picture that really exists in India. It now remains to be seen how the Maoists react to this movie when they see it.