How has Hindi cinema told the story of the 1999 Kandahar Hijack over the years? Rohit Shetty made his debut in 2003 by fictionalising the incident in the Ajay Devgn and Abhishek Bachchan actioner Zameen. Kunal Shivdasani’s Hijack (2008), starring Shiney Ahuja and Esha Deol, takes some parts from the real-incident and deviates into treating it like a rescue thriller. In that sense, Anubhav Sinha’s IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack is a facts-backed retelling of the seven days that unleashed terror in the lives of the 200 passengers onboard the flight and the Indian government’s attempts to single out a deal with the hijackers. Adding on to the sense of reality is the fact that it is based on the book ‘Flight Into Fear – A Captain’s Story’, co-written by Captain Devi Sharan, who was the head pilot on the plane. Having an element of truth, however, is not enough for a fulfilling experience. Ultimately, the show doesn’t rise up to become anything more than just the recounting of the incident and presenting it in a convenient, hyper-cinematic way.

It begins with a standard documentary-style baritone voiceover that plays with some stock footage of the IC 814, explaining the context behind the whole incident. It feels like a lost opportunity to create drama and tension as the story of the hijack is brought to the forefront right away in a journalistic manner rather than building the excitement through the storytelling. So, it doesn’t matter much when later we are introduced to Captain Sharan Dev (Vijay Varma) and air hostesses Indrani (Patralekhaa Paul) and Chhaya (Additi Gupta Chopra). Their personal story is briefly put forward so as to create a sense of relatability, but it doesn’t lead to a strong emotional connect with them. The lack of flair in introducing the protagonists translates even to the hijackers. The four of them carrying different aliases, Chief (Rajiv Thakur), Doctor (Harminder Singh), Burger (DilJohn) and Bhola (Kunal Chopra), don’t carry the menace needed for the job they are handling. The scene where they finally pull out their guns and declare that ‘It’s a hijack’, plays without any sense of pressing importance or urgency. It doesn’t generate the edginess and pounding anxiety that filled the frames during a similar scene in Ram Madhvani’s well-executed Neerja (2016).

Created by: Anubhav Sinha and Trishant Srivastava

Directed by: Anubhav Sinha

Starring: Vijay Varma, Pankaj Kapur, Naseeruddin Shah, Aditya Srivastava, Manoj Pahwa, Arvind Swami, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Kumud Mishra, Dia Mirza and Amrita Puri

Streamer: Netflix

At the same time, the show has a lot going on in terms of its style that works in its favour. All the different narrative timelines are separated with varying tints of blue and yellow. There is a calculated desaturation in the visuals that adds on to the claustrophobia of the hijack when combined with intense shades of ultramarine. Whereas in scenes involving high-ranking government officials, the images are mingled with white light and shadows, conveying at times the laid-back approach and a lack of intent to act swiftly. It also seems to underline the greyness that all of them contain within as they try to evade accountability and hide things from their seniors to avoid conflict. After a point though, this interplay of colours and sleek cinematography (by Ewan Mulligan and Ravi Kiran Ayyagiri) doesn’t quite combine with an emotional release as the writing lacks the motivation to explore its characters wholeheartedly. It feels that the writers—Adrian Levy, Trishant Srivastava, and Anubhav—are content with sticking to the ‘what’ of the story rather than the ‘how’.

With the show, Anubhav gets a breather from making political films. This time, there is no angry undercurrent in the story that is coming out through long monologues nor is there a community that needs to be saved. Although there is some serious world politics at play in the entire incident, Anubhav presents it each time through a simplistic narration. There is also an undercooked effort to look at the worldview of the hijackers that comes across only through some one-liners in the dialogues. After killing one of the passengers on the plane, Indrani expresses her sorrow to a hijacker, to which he ambiguously responds by saying, “It’s your privilege to still think that death is a tragedy.” Or when an intelligence officer, Sanjay Mishra (Yashpal Sharma), interrogates a jailed terrorist, Masood Azhar (Danish Khan), and brings up the plight of 200 people who are held at ransom in the plane and Masood interjects, “All of Afghanistan is held captive and Palestine too,” inviting an air of indifference from Sanjay. It feels more awkward than evocative to see such passing references made about complex geopolitical conflicts and the trauma it leaves on people. It would have further helped the narrative to look at the ‘other’ with an eye of understanding.

In all of this, the performances largely remain substandard too. Vijay truthfully embodies the captain right from the get-go through his mannerisms and facial expressions. Sitting in a single place for the most part with just the upper portion of his body in frame, he still manages to find nuances in his scenes. In the range of government officials, played by seasoned actors like Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Aditya Srivastava, Kumud Mishra, and Dibyendu Bhattacharya, it is Manoj Pahwa who stands out with his witty and energetic appeal. He brings in a timely sense of humour to some serious scenes just with the way he says his lines. His sequences with Arvind Swami, who is sincere and instantly believable as the secretary at the Ministry of External Affairs, are some of the liveliest moments in the show. Anubhav’s constant muse, Dia Mirza, gets little to do here as she plays a journalist reporting on the incident. Her narrative thread with Amrita Puri is the weakest link in the plot.

Anubhav Sinha is not new to directing multi-starrers. In an entirely different era, he made the high-on-style, low-on-substance thriller Dus (2005) and the forgettable Cash (2007), both of which boasted of a big line-up of actors. A lot has changed since, in terms of the sensibilities of the filmmaker and how he seems to have known what he really wants to make, which was seen in his films since 2018. It’s a new leap here, as he makes his web series debut and largely creates an engaging experience by showing nearly all that transpired during the dreadful hijack. Yet, something seems amiss. As the credits roll, you know certain information and it is just about enough to leave you curious. Nothing more, nothing less.