Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl Review: Narrates a Heartwarming and an Inspirational Story!

Inspired by the life of India’s first woman IAF officer to go to war, Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl stars Janhvi Kapoor and Pankaj Tripathi in the lead roles and is a part of a long list of direct-to-OTT titles arriving at Netflix in 2020. Detailing the more significant phases of Gunjan’s illustrious career, this 112-minute biographical drama is full-of-heart and succeeds in doing its job through and through.

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The storyline of Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl begins with her childhood and her immense dream of becoming a pilot when she grows up. Despite massive resistance from her family members, friends, and society, Gunjan follows her aspirations with the support of her father as the remainder of the movie showcases the hardships she endured during the journey.

Helmed by debutant director, Sharan Sharma, Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl does its job flawlessly by telling a motivational story that will at least inspire a single soul watching. Sharan’s ability to beautifully capture those subtle emotions from a simple smile to a heartful nod of approval without much dialogue and pounding background score maintained the simplicity of the characters and his narrative, remarkably. Subsequently, I believe with the sentiment that cinema is a powerful medium that can portray a message in the most influential way, and this film succeeds in that area inside and out.

Furthermore, the 112-minute runtime also tremendously helped the film with its pacing and did not allow to take a break in-between the scenes. However, similar to many biographical dramas, Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl follows that traditional biopic template from start to finish. Right from the very beginning, you can see where the film is navigating to and hits all the right buttons that you typically expect.

The secondary characters talk, react, and behave like you anticipate, from throwing sexist jokes to saying that a woman doesn’t fit in a men’s job, and many more. Although they are far from reality, the film took all the liberties (as shown in the disclaimer) to tell a much impactful story of Gunjan and her trials and tribulations.

Back to the positives, the backbone and the aspect that managed to tear me up a couple of times is the exceptional chemistry, and the emotional bond Janhvi Kapoor and Pankaj Tripathi’s characters shared in the movie. Although they didn’t have much dialogue between their interactions, the heartful scenes, and the pure love was portrayed splendidly on-screen.

Subsequently, complementing their relationship, the performances were also on-point for the most part. Janhvi Kapoor’s innocent and spotless look and body language fitted her role well, and she knocked the ball-out-of-the-park from the beginning till the end.

Pankaj Tripathi as her dad, contrary to his antagonist roles, is refreshingly good as this supportive father who always did, and wished the best for his loved one. The other supporting characters Angad Bedi and Vineet Kumar Singh, performed in their roles decently and added the much-needed drama required for the primary characters.

Amit Trivedi’s songs and background score blended into the movie solidly as they did not serve as a disturbance to the ongoing narrative. The visual effects by Team Red Chillies looked decent for the small screen as I could not find any glaringly poor shots, especially during the combat sequences in the climax.

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Overall, Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl managed to accomplish a few things throughout its runtime, the happy and heartening relationship between the father and his daughter, and telling an uplifting story the world could use in these grave conditions. With that being said, the standard biopic template might bore you out a little, but the one-hour-fifty-two-minute runtime allows you to binge the film at one go. Watch ‘Gunjan Saxena’ on Netflix here.

Rating – 3.25/5 | Grade – B

Images via Dharma Productions