Mission Kashmir is a 2000 Bollywood film directed and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and starring Sanjay Dutt, Hrithik Roshan, Preity Zinta and Jackie Shroff as the main characters. Mission Kashmir follows the life and tragedy of a young boy named Altaaf after his entire family gets killed by police officers. He is adopted by the man who killed them. When Altaaf finds out, he seeks revenge. Released in India on 27 October 2000, the film was a box-office success, and became the third highest grossing film of the year.

The movie deals with the India-Pakistan conflict and especially with the tragedy of children suffering from war. Its screenplay was written by Pulitzer Prize finalist Suketu Mehta. The movie was rated R in America due to violence. The film was screened at the Stockholm International Film Festival.

Synopsis[link]

Inayat Khan (Sanjay Dutt) is the Senior Superintendent of Police responsible for the security of Srinagar, Kashmir. One day, his young son Irfaan (Yogin Soni) suffers an accident and is taken to a hospital. Unfortunately, due to a fatwa instigated by the leader of a terrorist group forbidding doctors to treat policemen, as one doctor named Aktar, his wife, and daughter fell victim to the terrorist group after treating Khan, the doctors refused to treat Irfaan. Khan angrily swears to kill the doctors if they don't treat his son, but they still refused, saying they are willing to die to ensure their families' safety from the terrorist group. As a result, Irfaan dies, and Khan swears to put an end to the threat of the terrorist group in revenge for his son's death. After finding out that the group of terrorists is taking refuge in the village of Dalgate, Khan and his men manage to attack and kill the criminals. Unfortunately, a family is caught in the crossfire, and they are killed as well. A young boy named Altaaf is the only family member who survives the shooting. He is severely traumatized by seeing his parents and sister die before his eyes and is haunted by the memory of the masked face of one of the police officers who shot at his family: that police officer is Khan. Altaaf falls unconscious and is jailed by Khan's men, much to Khan's anger, who then berates his officers for placing an orphaned boy in a cell just because his family offered shelter to the terrorists. Khan's wife Neelima (Sonali Kulkarni), having just lost Irfaan and feeling sorry for Altaaf, attempts to persuade Khan to let them adopt the boy. Khan, despite his fear that Altaaf may one day discover the truth and get revenge for it, reluctantly agrees, feeling extremely remorseful for killing Altaaf's family.

Just when Altaaf seemed to have settled down in his new home and accepted Khan and Neelima as his new parents, he finds Khan's mask and realizes that Khan was one of the police who killed his family. After an unsuccessful attempt on Khan's life, the angry Altaaf runs away and is found and brought up by a terrorist group led by their Pathan leader Hilal Kohistani (Jackie Shroff), 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 (Hrithik Roshan) 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, all the while encouraging Altaaf to target Khan (who is now an Inspector General) in revenge of his family's death. Altaaf visits his childhood friend and TV personality Sufiya Parvez (Preity Zinta) and, though he falls in love with her and helps at her concerts, he still uses her to try and make Hilal's side plans (which is to blow up the TV tower of Srinagar on Khan's birthday) successful. He makes another unsuccessful attempt on Khan's life and, in the process, Khan recognizes him and begins trying to track him down, much to Neelima's discomfort, resulting a fallout between Khan and Neelima. At the same time, Sufiya learns of Altaaf's occupation as a militant, and breaks off her relationship with him, feeling somewhat betrayed, despite knowing that his family tragedy has caused him to go that way. On the same date Atlaaf's family was murdered, Altaaf makes another attempt on Khan by having three of Hilal's men to plant a bomb on Khan's briefcase. Unfortunately, this time, Neelima falls victim to it, much to the distraught of both Khan and Altaaf, with the former being unable to apologize for his argument with her and the latter screaming in remorseful agony for killing her.

Eventually, Khan manages to invade one of Hilal's men's hideouts and discovers evidence and information about Mission Kashmir after catching the men who planted the briefcase bomb. After going through some cassette tapes with the help from Sufiya, he realizes that Mission Kashmir has nothing to do with taking down the Prime Minister at all: instead, the true goal of Mission Kashmir is to launch missiles on the local Muslim mosque and the local Hindu temple 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 to spread the rumor of murdering the Prime Minister to cover up the terrorists' true goal. Hilal deliberately does not tell Altaaf what Mission Kashmir really is, knowing that Altaaf would not support it and would try to stop it; this was evident of 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, ordering his death if he doesn't consent over what the true targets will be. Through staging a fire in the jail that allowed one of the bomb-briefcase men to escape, Khan and his men managed to track down and capture Hilal, but they are distraught to hear that Altaaf and the other terrorists have left for to launch the missiles, something which neither the police nor the army can take action, as they still don't have any idea or time to find out where the missiles will be launched. Deciding to play wise on this, Khan 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 Altaaf, whom Khan swore to kill. He secretly lies to Hilal that he is more occupied with revenge for Neelima's death rather than doing his job of serving his country. Seeing that Khan's 'hatred' of Altaaf is worthy of a Pathan's duty, Hilal accepts the deal, and to ensure no other mistake will be made, Khan goes alone with Hilal to the missile hideouts.

As Hilal and Khan reached the swamps, Hilal tells Altaaf of Khan's whereabouts. At that point, an enraged, hate-filled Altaaf starts attacking a weary Khan to exact his revenge for his family's demise. While doing so, Khan reveals to him the true goals of Mission Kashmir, stating that Kashmir will be turned into a hell if the Hindu-Muslim conflicts arise by the missiles. Having had enough of listening to him, Altaaf attempts to shoot Khan in the head. Khan, expressing his dear love for Altaaf and his dear remorse for killing his family, is willing to accept his fate, but begs Altaaf to stop Hilal and his plans. As Altaaf struggles to do it, he then remembers that he once knew about the shrines Neelima took him to 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 Khan into stopping Hilal and his men from targeting the holy shrines. Just as things are about to end, 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, much to Altaaf's shock. While Khan fights back by shooting several terrorists to death, 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. Eventually, Altaaf gets shot in the torso, and he falls into the swamps. Khan then jumps in and safely takes the unconscious Altaaf back to dry land, 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 offscreen as he tries to get away after killing two of his associates. Altaaf ends up having a nice dream based one of his pictures he drew as a child before waking up in Khan's house, where he reconciles with Sufiya and forgives Khan, accepting him as his father again after 10 years.

Cast[link]

• Sanjay Dutt ... SSP Inayat Khan
• Hrithik Roshan ... Altaaf
• Preity Zinta ... Sufiya Parvez
• Jackie Shroff ... Hilal Kohistani
• Sonali Kulkarni ... Neelima
• Puru Raajkumar ... Malik Ul Khan
• Abhay Chopra ... Avinash Mattoo
• Vineet Sharma ... Gurdeep Singh
• Rajendra Gupta ... Chief Secretary
• Mohsin Memon ... Young Altaaf
• Yogin Soni ... Irfaan
• Rohit Dua ... Goru

Music[link]

The soundtrack of the film contains seven songs. The music is conducted by the award-winning trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, performing separately. Ehsaan Noorani composed three songs, while Shankar Mahadevan and Loy Mendonsa composed two songs each.

Reception[link]

Film journal Screen praised the performances, but further wrote, "Chopra makes a sincere effort in his latest film Mission Kashmir to bring to the fore, the turmoil in the valley. But one feels disappointed, all the same, that there is very little of Kashmiriyat in the story, which is more of a personal conflict between the victim of a police shoot-out and a police officer."^[2]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Mission Kashmir at the Internet Movie Database

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