'IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack' – Flawless Cast Leads Gripping Hijack Thriller

The captain of an aircraft is excited about an upcoming vacation with his family and a flight attendant on the same flight is worried about a delay in departure because of an ailing father back at home. It’s this humanity that primarily differentiates IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack from other entrants in the genre. On Christmas eve of 1999, a flight from Kathmandu to Delhi is hijacked by five people.

We’ve seen numerous hijack thrillers in Indian cinema and, at one point, most of them became predictable but Anubhav Sinha and his extremely talented team of writers found a way to keep their show consistently engaging and surprising. It’s difficult to point out what the ‘best’ thing about the Netflix show is but one of the most impressive aspects is its rhythm.

The editor does a fantastic job of taking the story from one location to another without sacrificing the storyline and it helps that he is aided by slick camerawork from Ewan Mulligan and Ravi Kiran Ayyagari. The show, based on real-life events, often cuts to pilot Devi Sharan (Vijay Varma) who is trying to safely maneuver a flight with a gun to his neck and the responsibility of all his passengers and crew on his shoulders.

Varma’s character is also the best written in the series – the writing and performance both challenge the notions of heroism we’re accustomed to viewing. He does not have the affinity to reckless violence that Bollywood heroes do and neither does he view himself as a messiah. He is simply a man trained to keep calm in a crisis whose training is being stretched to the limit till all he has left is his empathy and will to live.

As the flight goes from city to city across countries in a week-long hijacking, the hijackers become increasingly agitated, and the passengers’ bravado gives way to exhaustion and grief. Most people in the show are kept in the dark with information rarely trickling down, only adding to their alarm and desperation. Beside the show’s technical prowess, it’s the cast that holds the show together.

The ensemble cast is filled to the brim with veteran actors, most of whom play the intelligence officials, bureaucrats, and ministers on the ground – Naseeruddin Shah, Aditya Srivastava, Kumud Mishra, Pankaj Kapur, Manoj Pahwa, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, and Arvind Swami among others. These are faces one would never tire of seeing.

But every single passenger on the plane and the ones playing the families of those aboard the aircraft do their best in heightening the show’s impact. Without them, the show would’ve lost some of its gravitas.

Patralekhaa finally gets the right script and stage for her talent – her mind is divided between wanting to keep her passengers safe and worrying about her father at home. The scene where she and her fellow flight attendant hold hands in worry before jumping back into action is particularly touching. Her performance, too, is one of the highlights of the show.

Oftentimes, there’s a singular focus in a hijack thriller -- only a few ‘confrontations’ get screen time. But IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack is not your everyday show. In fact, it might be one of the most gripping and compelling shows in the streaming space now.

Not a single character falls into a caricature even as tensions continue to escalate – except the amateurish accent from one of the hijackers. It stands out like a sore thumb, especially since most of his interactions are with Varma who is pitch-perfect at every step.

Another subplot involving two journalists is also one of confrontation – an idealistic editor (Dia Mirza) and a firebrand journalist (Amrita Puri) clash about how they should report the story. Words like responsibility and ethics are thrown around without ever feeling tacky.

"They're doing their best," the editor says. "Then the people deserve to know that this is their best," she hears in response.

The show also uses a docufiction format in places but it never feels jarring – in fact the shift in format helps the show balance its fictitious and real-life narratives. Even as you try to find out what parts are fiction, the show constantly reminds you of the ‘reality’ it is based in.

Even the geopolitical negotiations on ground are afforded enough time even if sometimes it feels like the writers couldn't use as heavy a hand to deal with this particular topic.

And yet, the film finds a way to weave in discussions about coalition governments, a nation's interests, matters of security, the rage from the middle class, and the 'trolley problem' the people on-ground are essentially dealing with.

'Visuals' and 'optics' also play an important role in the storytelling in IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack – the press makes its way into the show's storyline most naturally. And even in that subplot, the show finds nuance. While passengers' families refuse to interact with journalists in their moments of grief - as is their right - the press conferences give them a space to air their grievances.

This conversation about sensationalism vs passing the mic in media coverage doesn't take up too much of the show's time but it's only proof of how intelligently the show is structured.

The actual gravity of the situation isn’t explored through weapons and gratuitous violence like lesser thrillers tend to do – it’s explored through the human cost. What is the cost of someone hiding what they feel is innocuous information? What is the cost of a burst of anger in times of distress? The calamity in the skies is also seamlessly tied into the human cost of war and violence that we see on land.

Human lives lost are a loss to all of humanity and that is the reality at the show’s heart. It’s these ‘costs’ that keep piling up to make the show almost suffocating to watch towards the end.

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