No doubt, movies based on true-life experiences always have a place in my heart. It always leaves me with the thought that this is something that happened for real. Even if there should be any form of fiction added, it is just kinda minimal.
The mind-blowing part of it is getting to see the true picture of the person involved in the story. The hero, the legend, and it gives me some kind of appreciation for them for their outstanding courage and personality. Not knowing that someday the world is going to hear about them.
Most times these movies end up taking tears from my face, there are most times with sad endings, and even those that are not with sad endings are always leaving some pathetic impact on their viewers. You get the thought that “finally they made it”.
I have watched Clouds, Mary Kom, and many others, but this time around, I stumbled across another movie, and I was in doubt whether they would deliver well or not. The title doesn’t seem so bad, and the plot was also a bit catchy. I think I shouldn't judge a book by its cover.
It is a 2016 movie that has its genre in biography, thriller, and drama. It also ran for a duration of about 2 hours straight. It's also a Bollywood movie but subtitled in English.
The story was about an airplane attendant who risked her life to save the passengers on the flight from a terrorist attack. Their plane was hijacked by terrorists after a stopover at Karachi, Pakistan.
Neerja, who was the lead flight attendant, had to act bravely to keep the passengers out of harm's risk. The first thing she did was to alert the pilots of the hijack, so they quickly escaped, putting the plane on hold and lowering the risk of the attack.
The passengers were taken hostage as they tried to negotiate the deal. Neerja was persuaded to do most of the dealing; she saw that as an opportunity to overcome her fears and stand for what’s right. Instead of making things fall in the way of the terrorist, she turned it against them.
After a lot of dealings, the terrorist began taking the lives of the passengers as a threat in exchange for the pilots.
Neerja remembered her broken marriage, the toxic relationship she had with Naresh, her husband, who abused her. It was an arranged marriage from her father, who later regretted his actions of not allowing her to choose whom she would live happily with.
The attack was on, and there was no response from the airplane base. The government already had some armed forces around the port. Once the terrorists detected the forces, they started shooting heavily at the passengers. Neerja opened the emergency exit and made sure the passengers were safely out of the plane.
While she was saving the last set of passengers, she got some heavy shots on her. She couldn’t survive the heavy shots and left the world on her birthday.
Out of the 379 passengers who were on board the plane, 359 survived the attack. Neerja was remembered for her act of bravery and selflessness. She was awarded by the government of India and the U.S for her outstanding actions. Her mother's speech at the award convention almost got tears from my face.
The movie was worth watching, and one of the morals I derived from the movie is not to judge people. Neerja's parents didn’t notice their daughter wasn’t happy in her marriage, but they kept on scolding her and telling her to keep enduring because she is a lady.
The arranged marriage was a threat to her happiness; the only thing that gave her joy was her workplace. She took it to heart with much honesty and loyalty.
If I were to rank the movie on a scale of 10, I would give it an 8.7/10. And for those who are interested in watching movies based on true life, this is surely a good watch.
Image from IMDb.com
