Review: ‘Siege of the Kingdom: Temple Attack’ is a wasted opportunity

The problem with “State of Siege: Temple Attack” is that the movie simply can’t rise above the hackneyed mediocrity.

It could have been a high-class thriller drawing from one of the bleakest chapters in contemporary Indian socio-political history. Instead, the film prioritizes banking on Bollywood clichés. It becomes a dull performance of the thread about soldiers slaying terrorists in a flat, unimaginable plot trapped in the warp of a time.

“Temple Attack” is based on the 2002 Akshardham siege, though the narrative changes drastically with actual characters, names and even events. On 24 September 2002, armed men entered the Swaminarayan Akshardham complex in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, and an attack killed around 30 people and injured over 80. National Security Guard (NSG) commandos came forward to end the siege.

Writers William Borthwick and Simon Fantuzo use that broad outline to set up a fictional screenplay that shows no intention of understanding or exploring what actually happened. There clearly hasn’t been much research into the project, and writer-director Ken Ghosh fails to give the narrative any quality that would let the film resonate in one’s mind. Not a single sequence is outstanding or original enough to stick with you.

Ghosh, who has gone on to lead some interesting web series projects (“Dev DD”, “Abhay”) from Bollywood (“Fida”, “Chance Pe Dance”), is here as a storyteller surprisingly off-putting. are of. It begins with an operation to establish the identity of the protagonist, Major Hanut Singh (Akshaye Khanna), as a soldier who is an expert in hostage rescue situations, which has no direct connection to the film’s original. . plots. As the film opens, Major Hanut and his men are locked in a house in a snowy area to rescue a woman. They succeed in the mission, but lose a man and Hanut is injured. Tragedy will haunt Hanut in future.

As Hanut is currently called upon to lead the NSG team to salvage the temple situation, the narrative rapidly begins to lose focus. “Temple Attack” fails to generate enough drama to click as a gripping narrative, nor does the film succeed in using its facts to make gritty commentary.

If the aim was to use the actual events of the Akshardham attack to show how fearlessly and deftly the NSG acts, a series of random and choreographed commando-versus-terrorist fight sequences doesn’t do justice to the idea.

The problem is probably in the format. With less than two hours to spare, the film could not have been anything else, narrating such a momentous event. One is reminded of “State of Siege: 26/11” which dropped on OTT last year, and used an extension of the limited series format to set up a compelling narrative of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. You will be sorely missed for the details in “Temple Attack”.

Akshaye Khanna looks drab in NSG gear and does a good job as Major Hanut too – as much shoddy characterization allows him to. He is barred from a role that fails to be anything beyond a cardboard cutout prototype of a patriotic soldier driven by zeal of duty and patriotism, as well as personal loss. Most of the others in the film’s cast are substantial.

“State of Siege: Temple Attack” is a good opportunity to tell an interesting story that went to waste. The film fails to look at tough questions and prefers to use a chain of events to set up simple masala material.