Kandahar (2010 film)

Kandahar
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Major Ravi
Produced by	Sunil C. Nair Mohanlal
Written by	Major Ravi
Starring	Mohanlal Amitabh Bachchan Ganesh Venkatraman Sumalatha Ragini Dwivedi Ananya
Music by	Shamir Tandon Vivek V. K.
Cinematography	Ravi Varman Velraj
Edited by	Don Max
Production company	Zoe Estebe Moviez Pranavam Arts International
Distributed by	Aashirvad Release through Maaxlab
Release dates	16 December 2010 (2010-12-16)
Country	India
Language	Malayalam
Budget	7.5 crore (US$1.2 million)[1]

Kandahar is a 2010 Malayalam war film directed by Major Ravi. It stars Mohanlal, reprising his role from the prequels, Keerthi Chakra (2006) and Kurukshetra (2008), as Major Mahadevan. Amitabh Bachchan and Ganesh Venkatraman also play major roles. The film was released on 16 December 2010, along with its dubbed versions in Tamil and Hindi. The plot is based on the hijacking incident of Indian Airlines Flight 814.^[2][3] The political situation is portrayed from an Indian perspective in the film.

The sound design of the film is done by Baylon Fonseca. Kandahar is co-produced by Sunil Nair and Mohanlal. It was marketed online by Shaz Shabeer Strikers & Crew Kochi. The film, made at a budget of 7.5 crores, unlike the prequels it received negative reviews.^[4]

Plot

Suryanatha Varma (Ganesh Venkatraman) is an educated, unemployed man. His father, Lokanatha Sharma (played by Amitabh Bachchan), wants to see his son victorious in life. Things change when he meets Major Mahadevan (Mohanlal). It's another mission with Mahadevan and crew, as they deal with international terrorism with a flight being hijacked by hardcore terrorists. Kandahar is about the Kandahar Indian Airlines flight hijack incident which rattled the nation in 1999. Amitabh Bachchan will be seen as the father of a passenger on the ill-fated plane that was hijacked and Mohanlal will play a commando named Major Mahadevan, who is on the mission to rescue the passengers.
The 2010 film Kandahar did average business at the box office, in spite of a star-studded cast, with the climax being cited as one of the reasons. The climax also bears remarkable similarity to the Hollywood action movie "Executive Decision"

Cast

• Mohanlal as Major Mahadevan
• Amitabh Bachchan as Lokanatha Sharma
• Ganesh Venkatraman as Suryanatha Sharma
• Sumalatha as Sumangaly, wife of Lokanatha Sharma
• Ananya as a Student
• Ragini Dwivedi as Aishwarya, Surya's girlfriend
• Major Ravi as Company Havaldar Major Shiva
• K. P. A. C. Lalitha as Pathumma
• Mamukkoya as Mullah
• N. L. Balakrishnan as Balettan
• Anoop Chandran as Selvan
• Jaffer Idukki as Mani
• Ragasya (Special appearance)
• S.P.Sreekumar

Production

Development

Mohanlal with Amitabh Bachchan

Kandahar is the third film in the "Major Mahadevan series", the previous ones being Kirtichakra (2006) and Kurukshetra (2008). Kirtichakra was a runaway success in Kerala, and Kurukshetra was a superhit.^[5] Jeeva played a supporting role in Kirtichakra and Siddique in Kurukshetra. This time Ganesh Venkatraman is playing the supporting role. Surya was supposed to do the role but was replaced by Ganesh when he opted out of the project due to date clashes with 7aam Arivu.^[6]

Casting

Mohanlal plays the lead role and is the film's producer. Several other artists from Tamil cinema were initially approached to play secondary leads as well, including Suriya and Arun Vijay, who all cited date conflicts. Later, Ganesh Venkatraman was finalized for a role. Amitabh Bachchan was approached for a major role in the film, and he immediately agreed. Even though he did not ask for any remuneration for his appearance, he was offered a whopping 8 crores.^[7] His son in Kandahar is played by Ganesh Venkatraman.^[8] Later, model Ragini Dwivedi was signed up to play a supporting role.^[9][10] There were reports that Parvathy Omanakuttan was also cast in the film.^[9]

Locations

At a press conference, Major Ravi reported that the aeroplane sequences of the film would be shot in Russia. Other locations include Ooty and New Delhi.

Release

The film was released on 16 December 2010 in 111 theaters in Kerala, 9 theaters in Bengaluru, 5 theaters in Chennai, and around 18 theaters in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Hyderabad. Kandahar has collected 5.25 crores revenue from before releasing through selling satellite rights, audio rights, video rights, overseas distribution rights, and theater advances.

Reception

Kandahar received negative reviews upon release.^[11] Though it was one of the most-awaited films of the year, it failed to attain a good word-of-mouth or a favorable and ended up as flop at the box office.^[4][11] A review by Sify, which rated it "below average" said, "There are moments when every Indian would feel proud about being born in this great land, but the shaky script, ordinary action sequences and a faulty climax lets the film down."^[12] Rediff published a nearly negative review saying, "A better script would have perhaps made the return of Major Mahadevan more appealing." It rated the film 2.5 in a scale of five.^[13] OneIndia gave the movie a 3/5 rating,^[14] MMDb gave a rating of 2/5 ^[15] and so did Now Running a 2/5.^[16]

Accolades

Asianet Film Awards

• Best Feature Film on National Integration Award - Major Ravi

Soundtrack

The soundtrack features five songs composed by Shamir Tandon, who is known for his compositions in Madhur Bhandarkar's films.,^[17] with lyrics by Sandeep Nath, Vayalar Sarath Chandra Varma, Sudhakar Sharma and Kaushal Kishor.

References

External links

• Kandahar at the Internet Movie Database