Review: Shaurya

Cast: Rahul Bose, Kay Kay Menon, Minissha Lamba

Direction: Samar Khan

I can't decide what I'm more upset about. The fact that the makers of Shaurya have blatantly lifted the plot, premise and screenplay of A Few Good Men, or the fact that they haven't done a good job of copying the film. Set against the backdrop of the armed forces in Srinagar , Shaurya too — like A Few Good Men — revolves around a court martial. Captain Javed Khan, played by Deepak Dobriyal, is charged with killing a senior officer. What initially seems like an open-and-shut case turns out to be a shameful and shocking case of communal prejudice involving a highly respected officer of the Army, Brigadier Pratap Singh played by Kay Kay Menon.

On another level, Shaurya is also the coming-of-age journey of Major Siddhant Choudhary, played by Rahul Bose, the lazy and distracted drifter who reluctantly takes up the job of defense counsel but dives right in when he suspects the man being held guilty may actually be just a cover-up for a much larger crime.

The film also stars Javed Jaffrey as Major Akash Kapoor, Siddhant's best friend and incidentally the prosecuting lawyer in this case who clashes with Siddhant in court. Minisha Lamba, meanwhile, plays a local newspaper reporter who sets off Siddhant on this do-the-right-thing mission, and — because no man and woman can be just platonic friends in Hindi films — is seen emerging as his love interest too.

What I can't understand about filmmakers who plagiarise successful American films is their misplaced holier-than-thou attitude; they have no shame stealing the entire plot of a film, but they'll insist on changing key plot points here and there so they can't be accused of complete duplication. Invariably, however, it's these very changes they make in their films that end up ruining a perfectly good story. Samar Khan, writer-director of Shaurya does the same with his film.