Movie Review

Runway 34 movie cast:
Ajay Devgn, Rakul Preet Singh, Amitabh Bachchan, Boman Irani, Aakansha Singh, Angira Dhar
Director: Ajay Devgn

Aviation has zero tolerance toward safety. There are certain rules which has to be followed by everyone, be it passengers or crew. Ajay Devgn’s aviation thriller ‘Runway 34’ starts on a very cruising note with the glamour quotient of being at Dubai Airport and flight commander’s attitude of 16000 Hrs of flying at its best. The superstar boasts of confidence and command over flight, bit of arrogance due to his seniority and some applause for challenging flight operation in Hong Kong .

The pilot in command, Capt. Vikrant Khanna is shown as an over confident pilot who scans the flight plan and weather updates within the blink of eye. While cruising at an altitude of 34000 feet, Capt Khanna smells the uninvited turbulent weather waiting on path of the Cochin Airport Runway. He ignores the advice of his co-pilot first officer Tanya Alburqurque, role played by Rakul Preet Singh. The ATC staff who was navigating the flight to Cochin Airport seemed to be exhausted by his personal loss. His casual work approach kept the cockpit aloof of the alarming weather situation and last minute diversion updates to Bangalore from Trivandrum ATC.

Ajay Devgn as Capt Vikrant Khanna has played a very sensitive and responsible pilot who knew things are not going to be easy for him and as a result with no options left amid shortage of fuel, he called the ATC “mayday”, which in aviation is a distress call that is used to signal a life-threatening emergency by the pilot in command.

After failed landing approach at Trivandrum airport,with his previous experience of landing at this table top runway, Capt Vikrant Khanna asked the ATC to navigate and clear landing from Runway 34, which has harsh tail wind towards approach. Which means, strong winds will push aircraft forward and it will be difficult to control speed and it might fall in the deep gorge ahead. He managed to retard the wing flaps after harsh landing and control the brakes of the aircraft just at the end of the runway which looked slightly filmy better scripted to showcase the heroic act of superstar.

This action of him initiated investigation and Amitabh Bachchan as the Chief of Aircraft Investigation Board has done full justice to his role. Aviation is a very subjective matter and one need to very specific about what they say and what they do. Amitabh Bachchan speaks pure Hindi words which sometimes make other co-actors looking for its meaning.

Supporting role by Boman Irani as airlines chief, Angira Dhar as corporate lawyer and other actors seemed to be fitting best as per the script requirements.

To conclude, I would say that Runway 34 is one good approach of Bollywood that they tried to attempt making movie out of such a serious safety issue. Few scenes are technically brilliant and shooted with best of VFS impact, dialogues are well delivered, actual shoot at sim facility is also well curated which will be certainly new for the mass audience to know about.
One inside fact about aviation is that there are many incidents where senior commanders ignore advice of their junior co-pilots so what is shown in this movie is a bare truth of the industry.

(By Vishal Kashyap, Managing Editor, Aviation World)