…is reasonably shot, well-edited and generally put together nicely. But its screenplay hasn’t been too well thought out. Smaller films often have this tendency to do a little more. The idea is to give your audience as much value in storytelling and film gimmick as you can. After all you don’t have the frills, thrills or spills of big-budget star vehicles. But that’s also the easiest way of over-doing drama. The climax and general build up with the border scenes in this film are too middle-of-the-road. The intentions are noble. But the idea of bhaichara and peace on the border is as defunct as some of the laws and amendments in our constitution. More of the same old is never too much fun.

A chicken, Indo-Pak enmity and all-round buffoonery…the satire is not particularly nuanced, profound or even consistently funny, but it’s still impressive because the film is just wicked enough.

There’s a desperation to most of the film’s scenes, as if the writers were being forced to come up with material on the spot. I’m not sure why Om Puri agreed to act in a film in which his character is forced to do 17 squats by way of apology, but he did, and it’s brutal. But the film really begins to lose its marbles when a Pakistani army cook risks his life to bring food and water to the Indian fowl-fetcher in no man’s land.

What could have sounded a laugh riot on paper ends up as ridiculous on the big screen. Of course the intentions are right and the situations spot on but apart from a few stinging comments on the polity, it fails to grow into a cogent commentary on the state of affairs.