Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero (2005)

Director:

Shyam Benegal

Writers:

Atul Tiwari (writer)
Shama Zaidi (writer)

Release Date:

13 May 2005 (India)

Genre:

Biography | Drama | History | War

Tagline:

Extreme times call for extreme action and extraordinary people...The Indian Struggle for Independence. Peopled by great men and greater heroes...And sometimes, there comes along a figure that stands out even in such distinguished company.

Plot:

The film, which is about the last five years of the Indian leader Subhas Chandra Bose's life, also includes his life's story in flashback sequences. However, it does not cover the controversy surrounding Bose's death.

Plot Keywords:

India | Soldier | Nazi | British Italian | Mahatma Gandhi

Cast

Ila Arun	...	Ranu
Pankaj Berry	...	Aabid Khan
Nicolas Chagrin	...	General Auchinlek
Nalini Chatterjee	...	Meera
Pradeep Kumar Das	...	Servant
Divya Dutta	...	Ila Bose
Chris England	...	CID Chief
Arindham Ghosh	...	Subhas Chandra Bose's Cousin
Rajit Kapoor	...	Abid Hasan
Ahmed Khan	...	Mian Akbar
Shakeel Khan	...	Sarat Bose
Kulbhushan Kharbanda	...	Uttamchand Malhotra
Sachin Khedekar	...	Subhas Chandra Bose
Howard Lee	...	Bengal Governer
Kunal Mitra	...	Ashok Bose
Samiran Mukherjee	...	Subhas Chandra Bose's Cousin
Rohan Nicol	...	CID Officer
Lal Babu Pandit	...	Checkpost Policeman
Florian Panzner	...	Alexander Werth
Surendra Rajan	...	Mohandas Karamchand 'Mahatma' Gandhi
Charu Rohatgi	...	Bibavati
Alaknanda Roy	...	Prabhavati Bose
Ashiesh Roy	...	Spy Police 2 (as Aashish Roy)
Rajeshwari Sachdev	...	Capt. Lakshmi Sehgal
Udo Schenk	...	Adolf Hitler
Jishu Sengupta	...	Sisir Bose
Gen Seto	...	Ambassador Oshima
Rakesh Shrivastav	...	Spy Police 1
Arindam Sil	...	Jail Warden
Suneel Sinha
Sandeep Srivastava	...	Nambiar
Lalit Tiwari	...	Checkpost Policeman
Christian Willis	...	Jail Superintendent
Rajpal Yadav	...	Bhagat Ram Talwar
Arif Zakaria

Also Known As:

Bose: The Forgotten Hero (India: English title) (working title)

Runtime:

208 min

Country:

India

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Certification:

UK:15

Filming Locations:

Berlin, Germany

Company:

Sahara India Media Communication Ltd.

Trivia:

The title description of Netaji, "The Forgotten Hero", was chosen by director Shyam Benegal because he felt that outside the state of Bengal, nobody knew who Bose really was and/or what he did for India's independence.

Quotes:

Subhas Bose: Give me blood and I will give you freedom!

Soundtrack:

Desh Ki Mitti

The film is..... RUBBISH!!! RUBBISH!!! RUBBISH!!!!

So on 16 September 2008, I finally got to watch this film on Zee Cinema in UK. I had been dying to watch this film for some time now! I love biographical films like Sardar, Legend of Bhagat Singh, Gandhi, JFK and other films like. The reason being that these are the types of films that are made only after a ton of research has been done.

But Bose, I did not enjoy! Why? Because of its cheap production values and crappy acting. Sachin started off brilliantly, portraying Bose wonderfully but then everything started looking cheap and executed in a hurry.

This film should have been an epic but it lacked everything that would have brought closer to being an epic! Cinematography at times was just simple, boring and unattractive. The wide angle lens were used very badly.

Dialogues were just plain stupid at times.

Sound Mixing was stupid at moments.

The way INA was portrayed very badly.

The army movements were stupid! I really wish that they had used some real Military Advisers. The drunk solider scene was just pointless! The 600 South Indian soldiers' scene was pointless!!! The actor was portraying as Hitler was very inappropriate! The scene in Kabul where Sufi Saint and his followers were singing was totally pointless and dragged for too long, unnecessarily! Those two cops outside Bose's house were stupid characters and had no value! The Austrian secretary character was pretty much useless and acted very badly! She was trying to act in a Bollywood-ish manner which did not suit her at all! The special effects/computer effects were horrendous! They were blowing spitfires off with hand grenades! You can damage a spitfire but you can not destroy a plane with grenade like that! The explosion animation/effect that was used to blow up the planes at night was used again and again, and even in daytime when they were blowing up the tanks when INA is attacking India.

The train shot in the beginning of the film were shot very badly and without any invention and creativity! Two times, same shots were used twice in the film! The infrastructure that was shown around in the film, definitely didn't look like it was from 1930s 1940s.

The cheating shots such as, when Bose were attending the INA parade in Singapore or Japan, didn't look like either of those countries. They were clearly shot in India.

When INA is finally marching towards India,they are attacked by British planes. This as done with computer graphics but the planes were so obviously just black blobs flying! They didn't even bother to fix it so that the tree that were between the planes and road were between the planes and road. To put it short, computer effects sucks big time! They would probably look OK in a Pakistani film! lol! Overall this film was just 2, 2 out of 25!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! RUBBISH!!! RUBBISH!!! RUBBISH!!!!