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A film by Salman Khan is an event by itself. Every year thousands of his fans, which include more females from all age groups than males, wait to see what Eid has in store for them because the Khan has made it almost mandatory to time the release of his film with the Festival.
For the first time in his career the macho actor does not lift his fist to bash the enemy to pulp as his fans love to see him doing or even playing the lover boy because here he plays Gandhigiri to the hilt.
Many actors before him have played the dim-witted, clumsy adults,( Aamir Khan and Rithik Roshan come immediately to mind among the new generation )but this film is not about ordinary people.
Laxman (Salman Khan) who is tormented by everyone for being dim and called a Tubelight and Bharat (Sohail Khan) are two brothers living in a remote village of Kumaon. Their bonding is so natural that it shows on screen but once the younger brother joins the Army (the story dates back to the 1962 Indo-China war) the focus is entirely on Salman Khan.
As the reports of Indian soldiers dying in the war (for which India was thoroughly unprepared) are flashed through newspapers and radio, the air is thick with hostility towards any one looking as Chinese.
It is during this hostility that late Om Puri, the uncle who looks after the two brothers, preaches Gandhigiri to Laxman. Since he is a Tubelight he is not bound by the normal behavioural patterns and takes easily to the fresh entrant to Bollywood from Arunachal Pradesh, Matin Rey Tangu and his mother the beautiful Chinese actress Zhu Zhu who come to live in their village.
Loving an enemy during war-time specially when casualties of Indians are increasing, can only result in mob lynching but the dim-witted Laxman does not carry a baggage of biases of normal people. In the beginning he does make the child shout Bharat Mata ki Jai but he takes Gandhi too seriously who preached not to hate the enemy but to hate Evil instead.
Zhu Zhu does try to explain to the villagers that she was as much an Indian as them because she and her son were born in Rajasthan but the village goons attack them repeatedly because they have to take out their anger somewhere for the hostilities on the border.
But besides winning over the hearts of the two cute Chinese neighbours where his own brother is not only fighting on the border but has also been captured by China Laxman is also fighting a battle against his own lack of self confidence.
Om Puri, in probably his last filmi appearance before his death leaves the audience spell bound by his act proving that appearances cannot deter the performance of a competent actor.
To be frank Khan looks uncomfortable almost throughout the film playing a dumbo but guessing from the Talis he gets for his clumsy role he remains a charmer.
The ending of the film is also typically cliched but that does not take away from the powerful message that it leaves at this time of history when everyone is feeling so helplessly trapped by the tide of events that seem to be inexorably leading to unmitigated disaster.
