Mission Raniganj: The Great Bharat Rescue Movie Review

The film is based on the exploits of Jaswant Singh Gill, better known as ‘Capsule Gill’. He was a brave and diligent mining engineer from IIT Dhanbad who rescued 65 trapped miners at the Raniganj Coalfields in 1989. He devised a unique method where a metal capsule, capable of carrying a full-sized man, was dropped down a specially bored hole and the miners were rescued one-by-one. Gill himself went down the shaft first to see through the plan at ground level. He stayed down till all the trapped miners were hauled up and was the last person to come out after a six-hour ordeal. He was awarded the Sarvottam Jeevan Raksha Padak by the then President Ramaswamy Venkataraman in 1991 for his bravery. Coal India also honoured him with a lifetime achievement award.

The film is a dramatisation of the events which took place on that fateful day. We see interdepartmental rivalry at play, with some officers serving in the same branch coming in the way of Gill’s plans as they feel his achievements will overshadow their efforts. In contrast to the corrupt officials, symbolised by D Sen (Dibyendu Bhattacharya), we see honest government folk, like R J Ujjwal (Kumud Mishra), the project in charge of the mines, and politician Govardhan Roy (Rajesh Sharma), doing their utmost to give succour to the trapped miners. Among the miners themselves, there’s a faction, led by Bhola (Ravi Kishan), who feels the government will do nothing and has left them to die and then there’s Pasu (Jameel Khan), who cooperates with the authorities, trying to calm everyone inside the flooded mine. Bindal (Pavan Malhotra) is brought in as the digging expert who uses all his jugaad to drill in a hole big enough to slide in the capsule. Assisting him in the efforts is former land surveyor Tapan Ghosh (Virendra Saxena), who makes the accurate guess about where the miners would supposedly have gathered. And overseeing it all is the towering personality of Jaswant Singh Gill (Akshay Kumar) himself, who cajole, pleads, swell talks, uses every amount of cunning and wisdom he has to get the government gears rolling, sometimes using brawns instead of his brains to get the job done.

There’s plenty of drama both above and below the ground to keep you hooked. Juxtaposed to the rescue operation is the romance shown between Jaswant and his pregnant wife, Nirdosh (Parineeti Chopra). Thankfully, it’s kept to the minimum, and doesn’t take much screen time. We do have them dancing to a wedding song a bit but that’s the gist of it. The director has succeeded in capturing the sense of dread witnessed by the trapped miners. The twists come every five minutes and keep you hooked. The computer graphics could have been a lot better but the lack of finesse in the CGI department doesn’t blunt the drama. At the end, you’re left marvelling at Gill’s ingenuity and bravery and feel a sense of pride when all the miners get safely extracted.

Akshay Kumar really commits himself playing real heroes. He did it in PadMan and has done it here too. We see him struggling to maintain a sense of calm amidst the chaos. The concern that he feels for the miners seems real and you root for him to succeed throughout the film. The rest of the ensemble cast too stand out and have given the film their all. Mention must be made of Kumud Mishra as the hapless head of operations and of Ravi Kishan as the hot-headed Bhola, channelling his inner Shatrughan Sinha from Kala Patthar. Parineeti Chopra too fills in the shoes of a supportive wife who bats for her superhero husband.

We need more films to celebrate real life heroes like Jaswant Singh Gill. Watch the film to raise a cheer in his memory.

Trailer : Mission Raniganj: The Great Bharat Rescue