Mission Kashmir

 

Mission Kashmir is a 2000 Indian Hindi-language action thriller film directed and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. Starring an ensemble cast of Sanjay Dutt, Hrithik Roshan, Preity Zinta, Jackie Shroff, and Sonali Kulkarni, its screenplay was written by Suketu Mehta.

The film follows the life and tragedy of a young boy named Altaaf Khan (Hrithik Roshan) after his entire family is accidentally killed by police officers. He is adopted by the police chief who is responsible for this, and when Altaaf finds out, he seeks revenge and becomes a terrorist. The film deals with terrorism and the tragedy of children suffering from war. It was rated R in the United States due to violence. The film was screened at the Stockholm International Film Festival. Upon release, the film, despite releasing along with Aditya Chopra's romance Mohabbatein, the film became a critical and commercial success and emerged as the 3rd highest-grossing Bollywood film of 2000.

Mission Kashmir received six nominations at the 46th Filmfare Awards, including Best Film, Best Director (Vidhu Vinod Chopra), Best Actor (Sanjay Dutt), Best Supporting Actress (Sonali Kulkarni), and Best Villain (Jackie Shroff), and won Best Action.

 

Plot

Inayat Khan is the Senior Superintendent of Police responsible for the security of Srinagar, Kashmir. One day, his young son Irfaan meets an accident and is taken to a hospital, but due to a fatwa instigated by a wanted terrorist named Malik Ul Khan forbidding doctors to treat policemen and their families, the doctors refuse to treat Irfaan out of fear of letting their families suffer Malik's wrath. As such, Irfaan dies succumbing to his injuries, and Inayat swears revenge on Malik for this.

Eventually, Inayat and his men were able to track down Malik and his men at a village called Dalgate, and they manage to kill them all. Unfortunately, a family caught in the crossfire is killed by accident, and a young boy named Altaaf is the only survivor traumatized by the deaths of his parents and sister. Inayat's wife Neelima, feeling sorry for Altaaf, attempts to persuade Inayat to adopt Altaaf. Despite fearing that Altaaf may one day discover the truth and get revenge for it, Inayat reluctantly agrees as he is wracked with remorse for killing Altaaf's family.

Just when Altaaf seems to have settled down in his new home and accepted Inayat and Neelima as his new parents, he learns that Inayat was one of the policemen who killed his family. After an unsuccessful attempt on Inayat's life, the young Altaaf runs away and is found and brought up by a terrorist group led by their Pathan leader Hilal Kohistani, who brainwashes him into thinking that he and his men act according to Islamic principles and trains him to become a terrorist.

Ten years later, Hilal and an adult Altaaf are assigned the task of completing "Mission Kashmir," a plan of an unnamed terrorist sponsor that involves; or so Altaaf is told, killing the Indian Prime Minister. Hilal uses Altaaf's hatred as a means to achieve his own goals while encouraging the latter to target Inayat, who is now an Inspector General, for his family's death. Altaaf visits his childhood friend and television personality Sufiya Parvez and, though he falls in love with her, uses her to try and make Hilal's plan of blowing up the local TV tower of Srinagar on Khan's birthday successful. He makes another unsuccessful attempt on Inayat's life, which results in him being branded as a wanted criminal by the media and a fallout between Inayat and Neelima.

Sufiya also learns of Altaaf's true occupation and breaks off her relationship with him. On the same date that Atlaaf's family was murdered, Altaaf makes another attempt on Inayat by having three of Hilal's men plant a bomb in Khan's briefcase. Unfortunately, Neelima falls victim to it by accident, much to the complete devastation of both Inayat and Altaaf, with the former having lost his chance to apologize for his argument with her and the latter screaming in remorseful agony for killing her.

Eventually, Inayat manages to invade one of the terrorists' hideouts and discovers evidence and information about Mission Kashmir after capturing the bomb-briefcase men. After going through some cassette tapes with the help of Sufiya, Inayat learns that the true goal of Mission Kashmir is to launch missiles on local places of Hindu and Muslim worship to escalate Hindu-Muslim conflict across the subcontinent, thereby dividing Kashmir and turning it into a war zone. It also turns out that the attack on the TV tower was planned by Hilal to spread the rumor of assassinating the Prime Minister to cover up the true plot. Inayat also learns that Hilal deliberately kept the true plot of Mission Kashmir a secret from Altaaf for he fear that Altaaf would not support it. This is made evident when Atlaaf leaves to the swampy hideouts to prepare for the launches, Hilal secretly tells one of his men to keep an eye on Atlaaf and kill him if he doesn't consent over the true targets.

By staging a fire in the jail that allows one of the bomb-briefcase men to escape, Inayat and his men manage to track down and capture Hilal. Inayat offers to make a deal with Hilal: going under the false pretense of allowing Hilal and his men to continue forward with Mission Kashmir in exchange for killing Altaaf to avenge Neelima's death. Seeing that Inayat's 'hatred' of Altaaf is worthy of a Pathan's duty, Hilal accepts the deal, and to ensure no other mistake will be made, Inayat goes alone with Hilal to the hideouts.

As Hilal and Inayat reach the hideouts, Hilal tells Altaaf of Inayat's whereabouts. An enraged Altaaf starts beating up a weary Inayat, but the latter reveals to him the true goals of Mission Kashmir, stating that Kashmir will be turned into a hell if he lets Hilal destroy the holy shrines. Hilal orders Altaaf to shoot Inayat, who is willing to accept his fate after expressing his dear love for Altaaf and remorse for killing his family.

As Altaaf struggles to do it, he remembers that Neelima took him to the shrines and the comment Neelima said about choosing sides during her visit earlier. Unwilling to betray his mother, Atlaaf decides to put his plan of revenge aside and aids Inayat in stopping Hilal and his men from targeting the holy shrines. However, Hilal throws a bomb to distract them before getting shot to death by Altaaf, giving Hilal's men a chance to prepare to blow up the shrines.

While Inayat shoots down several terrorists, Altaaf redeems himself by taking possession of a missile launcher and using it to destroy the other launchers and kill the remaining terrorists, thus saving the shrines. However, Altaaf gets shot in the torso and falls into the swamps. Inayat jumps in and rescues the unconscious Altaaf by bringing him to shore, evading the explosion of the hideouts caused by Altaaf's act of redemption.

The plans of Mission Kashmir are revealed to the public by the media, and the terrorist sponsor's hideout is found by Kashmiri police, who shoot the sponsor as he tries to get away after killing two of his associates. Altaaf wakes up from a pleasant dream, where he reconciles with Sufiya and forgives Inayat, accepting the latter as his father again after 10 years.

 

Cast

·         Sanjay Dutt as Inayat Khan

·         Hrithik Roshan as Altaaf Khan

·         Preity Zinta as Sufiya Parvez/Sufiya Altaaf Khan

·         Jackie Shroff as Hilal Kohistani

·         Sonali Kulkarni as Neelima Khan

·         Puru Raaj Kumar as Malik Ul Khan

·         Abhay Chopra as Avinash Mattoo

·         Vineet Sharma as Gurdeep Singh

·         Rajendra Gupta as Chief Secretary

·         Ashok Banthia as Sharafat

·         Mohsin Memon as Young Altaaf

·         Heenaa Biswas as Young Sufi

·         Yogin Soni as Irfaan

·         Rohit Dua as Goru

·         Suchita Trivedi as Dr Akhtar's wife

·         Ram Awana as Zuber bhai