Red Alert New Film Review: A reluctant revolutionary or a scapegoat or a harbinger of new hope or plainly a simpleton sucked in the vortex of violence. Just who exactly is Narsimha, the protagonist of director Ananth Narayan Mahadevan’s film Red Alert - The War Within?
Questions like these flail around and perplex you no end throughout the running time of this film that rakes up the most explosive issue of the day - naxalism, a movement that has its critics and supporters.
Sadly, clear answers seldom come through and to be fair to Mahadevan they can’t, for the gist of a grass-root movement like naxalism can’t be encapsulated in mere few hours of a film. But the director, aided by a well-penned script by Aruna Raje (herself a talented director), does try, and, to an extent, succeeds.
Sunil Shetty plays Narsimha, a poor farmer who makes ends meet by supplying food to naxals deep in the forests. An apolitical person, all he wants is good life for his wife (Bhagyashree) and kids. But on an errand, he’s stuck in a shootout between the police and the naxals. Thereby he unwittingly becomes part of the naxal gang led by the firebrand leader Velu (Aashish Vidyarthi). Also part of the group is Laxmi (Sameera Reddy) who joined the naxals after being gang-raped by cops.
From cooking food for the outlaws, Narsimha learns to shoot guns and eventually spills blood. But questions begin arising in him about this movement. Is there no other way to seek justice? Does killing innocents not make them terrorists? Doubts like these torment him and he decides to take drastic steps.
Now, realism is something we don’t expect from a filmmaker like Mahadevan, known for making escapist Bollywood masala, and Red Alert is not without the trappings of commercial cinema, but the film does pack in ample drama, thrills, action and emotion to keep you engrossed. The shootout sequence in a school stands out or that scene when the naxals discover an informer in their group is riveting. Without taking sides, the movie tries to approach the naxal issue from different perspectives, that of the state and the human rights activists, but overall, nothing enlightening is presented.
Performances are good and the otherwise wooden Sunil Shetty does makes your heart heavy with his touching portrayal of a harried family man who becomes a killer by default than design. On the sidelines, Sameera Reddy and Seema Biswas perform well. Ayesha Dharkar stands out in a few scenes, while Naseeruddin Shah and Vinod Khanna have very miniscule roles.
Don’t expect anything path-breaking from Red Alert, but the movie is watchable at least once.
