Kabul Express: Right on Track!

Succeeding movies like the stylish Dhoom or the melodramatic Baabul and Vivaah, comes Kabul Express- laidback and subtle. The routine cinegoer should look before he leaps to watch it! There’s no leading lady, no songs and no romance. Only a short and crisp story- a little below two hours- set in a foreign land, that won’t allow you to walk out until the action is over.

Here you have two TV journalists trapped in a post-Taliban Afghanistan with Imran Khan Afridi (Salman Shahid), a Talibani refugee trying to flee back to homeland Pakistan. He lands with the two- Suhel Khan (John Abraham) and Jai Kapoor (Arshad Warsi) and an American girl, Jessica (Linda Arsenio) from Reuters. While they try to get their ‘scoop’ out of this special encounter, the ‘Talib’ routes his escape through them.

Kabul Express is a subtle comment on the way the Taliban regime and worse, the war, ruined Afghan life. The dusty, devastated landscape of Afghanistan is the perfect visual relief one could have asked for from the gaudy sets of multi-starrer movies. A place where Indians are recognised through “Amitabh Bachchan! Shahrukh Khan! Amir Khan!”. Certain shots are reminiscent of movies focusing on post-Taliban regions, like those by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami.

The plot goes a level further. It shows the humane face of the Talibani man; his love for Indian cigarettes and Hindi songs like ‘Main fikr ko dhuen mein udata chala gaya…’, which he hums with the Indians while the Afghani cab driver, Khyber (Hanif Hum Ghum) fumes at their amity. But at the end of it, while they will have to edit portions of the friendliness from their story, Imran has a surprise for himself in his own country.

You see the standard Arshad Warsi as the cameraperson. Any other actor would have made the character fade out. John fans should be making a beeline to the cinemas as soon as possible; the man has got his due after a long time. Though a journalist as suave, doing push-ups early morning is rare in the real world. Arshad is more convincing as the smoking, complaining and witty camera person.

The subtle humour, an insight into the Afghani war, will need to be understood well before you could swallow Kabul Express in one whole.