Anil Sharma, the creator of such dreadful films like Hukumat, Elaan- e-jang has this time sought to make a love story set against the horrors of partition. The film opens with a truly distressing and stunning 20 minutes when the horrors of partition are relived once again, with the Pakistani muslims shown as the monstrous villians cutting up poor innocent hindus who had to journey back to India. Train loads of butchered hindu bodies arrive back in India leading to murderous rampages by Sikhs and Hindus who target the muslims in India.

In one such rampage, Sakina (Amisha Patel) is separated from her family and set upon by bloodthirsty sikhs when truckwala Dara Singh (Sunny Deol) comes to her rescue, rubbing bloody sindhoor in her head, turning her from a "musalmani" to a sikhni. This was a ploy to save her and she ends up living in his home, thinking that her family has perished in their train journey to Pakistan. She chooses to stay rather than go to Pakistan. Dara marries Sakina and they have a child when one day, she discovers that her family is alive and in Pakistan. She goes across to visit them and finds that she is being kept in Pakistan away from her sikh husband and child. It is thus left to Dara to blast his way and retrieve her from the evil clutches of the Pakistanis.

High melodrama and possibly most repugnant to most Pakistanis. Not that we can take umbrage as we ourselves are responsible for turning the indians into the most hated and heinous of villians in many of our films (the plot souns like a reverse of recent Lollywood smash Tere Pyar Mein). That aside, Gadar is really a typical masala film with fantastical situations and actually just another of the Sharma's revenge dramas dressed up with a nationalistic slant. I found most of it to be most repugnant and insulting, and much of it so far removed from any form of realism that it leaves little impression on one. It starts off fairly impressively but soon descends into an appallingly average tale made more reprehensible because it seeks to authenticate events by trying to associate them with a period of history which even today divides India and Pakistan.

Sunny Deol does a fairly good job as Dara Singh. Amisha Patel has a dream role but one would have liked a more seasoned actress in the film. Still she gives a decent account of herself. Uttam Singh's music is pedestrian. Sharma's direction is assured and he ends up Paki bashing very successfully. Honestly, if anyone found Pukaar to be offensive, please do have a dekko at this one because it really sinks the depths to show India's neighbours as vile monsters.

A film which I find I cannot possibly rate.!!! One to avoid.