Rating: 2.5 stars on 5
Mission Raniganj: The Great Bharat Rescue is based on true events, and we see Akshay Kumar play Jaswant Singh Gill, Additional Chief Mining Engineer at Coal India. In 1989, young Jaswant Singh Gill saved 65 miners from the flooded Mahabir Colliery in Raniganj, West Bengal, with an unconventional rescue approach. Director Tinu Suresh Desai has now brought this story to the big screen, and Akshay Kumar, having played numerous real-life heroes on screen, evidently fits the bill.
Akshay Kumar is truly the star of this film, and from the first frame, he is shown to be a larger-than-life character. JS Gill is an extremely courageous man, and when tragedy strikes on 13 November, 1989, at the colliery, he becomes the saviour. 65 miners were yet to be rescued, and none of the methods they tried at the flooded mine seemed to work. This is when Gill comes up with the idea to create an iron capsule, dig a borehole, and drop it into the ground to bring out the miners. His idea helps save the miners, and Gill becomes a real-life hero.
While Akshay Kumar has delivered an outstanding performance, the storytelling by director Desai is a let-down. The gripping story is what needed to be at the forefront, but in Mission Raniganj, it becomes more about Gill and what he does. The emotional connection would have been more compelling had Desai given us a glimpse of what the 65 trapped miners were going through as well. The director could also have gone easy on the technical terms and made it more of an in-depth, humane story.
While the first half is slow and lags, the story picks up pace in the second. The poor VFX and production values are a major disappointment and don’t make it a pleasant watch. The cast had many actors, but none of those characters were well utilized. Even Ravi Kishan was given one scene to showcase his acting prowess and was just a prop otherwise. Parineeti Chopra, who plays Gill’s wife, hardly has anything to do in the film, and the romance between her and Gill could have been given a miss.
Desai and Akshay collaborated on Rustom, and Akshay Kumar went on to win the National Award. Mission Raniganj, though, doesn’t compare, and over dramatization kills the narrative. There are some scenes that do connect emotionally, but overall, as a rescue thriller, Mission Raniganj fails to impress.