Is Uri: The Surgical Strike a propaganda film?

Uri: The Surgical Strike theatrical poster

Well, the answer is yes. Just not in the way you think. It saves you a lot of time and you can leave right away if you cannot read beyond the headlines. Also, if you were looking for some confirmation bias and don't have patience to listen to the other side. And honestly, both for and against groups on this topic have gone deaf to other side. But let's not blame anyone here. It is the standard these days. In the world of today, arguments are not meant to explain your point with reason but to please those who already agree with you. Confirmation bias blooms on all fences. Opinions become content and there exists an audience for whatever side you pick.

So what side do I pick? Well, no points for guessing; none. Uri: the Surgical Strike is propaganda but not in the way it portrays the events but the way it depicts the army. If I still have your attention, we could be friends.

Uri: the Surgical Strike excels as a movie. There are no two ways about it. The film impeccably follows cinematic grammar and rarely faulters on story-telling. The events string up well. You don't notice the jumps in narrative for director Aditya Dhar cleverly presents them as chapter breaks. The camera moves just the right amount so you can still focus your mind and eyes and feel the rush(or, Josh). The shaky-cam doesn't really enliven the action sequences as in Bourne movies but keeps you absorbed. The dialogues do their needful which mainly amounts to sloganeering, chest thumping and tear-jerking fan-service. (No sin in that.) This, I find, particularly intelligent because dialogue is the face of a film script. People notice dialogues' relevance to the story and how much deeper the lines take the viewer into the story. Dialogues set the mood and tell what side to pick. Not many people care about why they like slow motion action sequences or why tears roll with music with high notes in the background. Dialogues are face of your story-telling, so better you don't lecture through dialogues, make them interesting. Still better idea: fan service.

I am not against fan-service. Let me be clear about it. I am a fan myself and love being served. I don't have any problem with the New India narrative either. Personally, I take it with a pinch of salt because right from the time I opened my eyes the world was always burning and everyone promised the things will get only better from "now" on. This is the story after every calamity and before every election. I have no issues if the government gets some mileage out of this fan-service.

What I have problem with is the blatant objectification of army reducing it to a tool to seek revenge for the common man. The movie shows the army seeking its revengr(as evident from Vicky Kaushal's dialogue when he kills the last terrorist) but let's not lie to ourselves, the film is for the common man who knows nothing of how armed forces function and how decisions are made. The film is a revenge-saga, which considering the ongoing trend in Bollywood, can set the box-office ringing. (Cough, Simmba..cough).

Bollywood traditionally has a way of justifying revenge, for which the writers invented the quintessential Bollywood protagonist. Anything our Bollywood protagonist does is justifiable. But how do you make a Bollywood protagonist, then? Well, give him a dysfunctional relationship with a loving mother, for start. Then you show him to be kind-hearted to weak and brutal to "bad people", a Robin Hood, to be percise. Voilà, Bollywood protagonist is ready. Just garnish him with dialogues and serve right in the middle of the screen.

Uri: the Surgical Strike ticks all check boxes of Bollywood revenge saga. Right in the title you know it. Revenge is so important that it even goes contradicting itself. There is a scene in the the film where Vicky Kaushal's character thrashes an innocent boy to find information from his brother and you feel our hero is pragmatic and has to make harsh decisions on his job but in the end sequence, he miraculously manages not to kill a 14-year old terrorist because he looks innocent. This pushed me right out of the film. It is okay to kill a 34- year old innocent man but not a 14-year innocent terrorist. We'll have to wait another 20 years guys, he's not ripe enough.

Further, Vicky Kaushal's character gets selected because he asks for vengeance. He selects his team based on revenge. He chooses officers from cadres that lost officers in the Uri attack. He says it out loud. The revenge muscle is massaged and tickled with no end milking as much as they could.

Sadly for makers and fortunately for the country, army doesn't function like this. Armymen like any other men feel vengeful but army acts in interest of the nation only. The moment army makes a fight personal, it seizes to represent the country.

Uri: the Surgical Strike is propaganda. It misinforms on functioning of our forces to cultivate even more problematic emotion of revenge.