Red Alert - The War Within Movie Reviews

In most Hindi films, the first thing you notice at the very start is a disclaimer which states that the film is a work of fiction and bears no resemblance to any person living or dead. But RED ALERT - THE WAR WITHIN admits that it's based on a real story. Even otherwise, the issue it dares to portray -- the Naxalite movement -- is topical, piping hot and an issue that has been dominating the front pages of newspapers for quite some time now.

Now what could be more topical than a film on India's most burning issue of the moment: the Naxalite movement that has metamorphosed into a civil war that seems to be setting our nation on fire. Ananth Narayan's film, scripted by one of our finest women directors, Aruna Raje, is doubly important. First, it literally takes off from the headlines that have been glaring in your face in the last few years.

Naseeruddin Shah has clearly chosen cameos for his belated forte. In the final minutes of this film (like the opening sequence of Prakash Jha’s Raajneeti), he randomly saunters on to the screen, this time, to express his audience’s most urgent sentiment: a long-drawn yawn. A poor man (Sunil Shetty) walks in to his house. It turns out they were classmates once. How many years Naseer may have flunked school to match Shetty’s years is not known.

Subtlety is not a virtue Bollywood can boast of. The industry thrives on boisterous dialogues, exaggerated stories and of course stereotype/cliched characters with a fixed, tired set of histrionic responses to every situation. Red Alert: The War Within, starring Suniel Shetty, Sameera Reddy, Ayesha Dharker, Seema Biswas, Ashish Vidyarthi, Vinod Khanna, Gulshan Grover and Naseeruddin Shah -- suffers from all these three ills.

Bollywood rarely steps out of its rather limited territory of love, marriage and foolish romance, and when it does, it makes for a refreshing change. Based on a true story, Red Alert starts with a few newspaper clippings on the Naxal violence, which has been described as India’s most dangerous internal security threat, a fact the country has painfully witnessed over the last few months.

Who is Salt? The film answers this question in a tight 100-minute span telling us everything about the CIA operative Evelyn Salt (Jolie) who's outed by a sleeper spy labelling her as a Russian spy working against the US government. Whether or not that's true is what we find through a series of high-octane action scenes, mad car chases and a myriad of twists and turns (an assassination plot) to keep you occupied.

An innocent gets caught in the crossfire between the police and a band of Naxals, deep in the jungles of Andhra Pradesh. That’s the thrust of `Red Alert’, which tells us that these men and women are brave soldiers fighting for justice, and that the state is a brute force trying to stamp out their existence. Ananth Mahadevan’s new film, based on a true incident, could have been an interesting, if not entirely novel, look at the proliferating conflict

We find ourselves fairly gripped in the opening few scenes of Red Alert- The War Within. The topicality of the film makes it very inviting as the Naxal movement occupies centerstage in the country's history like never before. The filmmakers deserve credit for cashing on a theme like that and also attempting a film that has none of the razzmatazz of new age cinema and only revolves around jungles, shabbily dressed extremists and whole lot weaponry.

On the whole, Red Alert - The War Within is a praiseworthy attempt by the entire cast and crew. Its commercial pro...