Hmmm so i had heard lots about this movie plus after repeated hearings of one the most haunting film songs i've heard plus a rather sexy and fresh looking Akshay i thought i'd definitely check it out. When my rental service sent me an email that it was on its way to me i couldn't contain my excitement but all this fell a bit flat after watching the filmBorder is based on the 'real life events' that happened during the Indo- Pakistani war of 1971also called The battle of Longewala which up until this movie i knew nothing about and still don't know much about but you can read about in on wikipedia
Overall i found Border quite an interesting but aggravating watch I'm not one to get involved in politics & i won't pretend to be an expert on the subject of the Partition but i PERSONALLY believe India & Pakistan are one.
Border had some 'Us' versus 'Them' approach as you can see from the subtitles in the slide below which i felt uncomfortable with, that the director later seemed to create a one India, Pakistan and Bangladesh after this film seemed somewhat phony as i noted in my previous review of his film Refugee (2000) which was 3 years after Border
Also added to my annoyance was some self righteous hindu/muslim hypocrisy in the scene where Sunil Shetty rescues a pakistani's man Quran from a burning house to which the muslim then exclaims to himself "and people say Hindu's are bad" which came across in a rather hypocritical and a desperate attempt to pander to the masses kind of way
'ahhhhhhhhh' very cringeworthy
Patrotism is a good thing but belligerent patrotism seems be the point of focus a lot in border, perhaps the director knew some audiences would play up to this as the film was the highest grosser of 1997
The film ended on the note of 'beginning a lasting peace' which i felt was rather corny after all the bashing that had gone previously
Poor Sunil Shetty i usually find him quite adoarble but he seems to have been given all the bigoted dialogues
Akshay Khanna was one of the reasons i watched this fim, he was so handsome and he gave a beautiful performance eeven though the film is a bit wishy washy with me, he won the Filmfare best male newcomer Award for his role as Dharamvir Bhan
The women have small roles in border as the weeping wives and left behind girlfriends
Sharbani Mukherjee one of the wives left behind, i'd never heard of her till this film and if you are getting some Rani vibes from looking at this picture, they are indeed real life cousins
Tabu as the teary wife
Pooja Bhatt as the left behind wife
And my beloved Raakhee was there as the mother of the ill fated army general
The music of this film is perhaps another reason that stopped me from hating it completely. Anu Malik was as always on top form with the beautiful strings and romantic sounds of 'hamen jab se mohabbat' (watch to see a super gorgeous Akshay) to the quiet soothing ballad sounds of 'To chalun' to my favourie 'sandese hate hain' which is the major reason or rather the first song i saw from the film that made me watch it, this was also the song that made Sonu Nigam a huge star and also got him the Filmfare best male playback singer award, now Sonu fans and lovers of good music hit the play button below
Total Score: 5/10 (extra points for the sake of Anu Malik's music)
