Kesari (film)

Kesari is a 2019 Indian Hindi-language action war film written and directed by Anurag Singh. It was jointly produced by Karan Johar, Aruna Bhatia, Hiroo Yash Johar, Apoorva Mehta and Sunir Khetarpal under the banners of Dharma Productions, Cape of Good Films, Azure Entertainment and Zee Studios. The film stars Akshay Kumar with Parineeti Chopra, Mir Sarwar, Vansh Bhardwaj, Jaspreet Singh, Vivek Saini and Vikram Kochhar in supporting roles. It follows the events leading to the Battle of Saragarhi, a battle between 21 soldiers of the 36th Sikhs of the British Indian Army and 6,000–10,000 Afridi and Orakzai Pashtun tribesmen in 1897. Initially planned as a production collaboration between Salman Khan and Johar with Kumar starring in the lead role, Kesari was announced in October 2017, with Kumar and Johar reprising their responsibilities; Khan later quit the project. Chopra was cast as the deceased wife of Kumar's character. Principal photography for the film began in January 2018 and concluded in December. The soundtrack was composed by Tanishk Bagchi, Arko Pravo Mukherjee, Chirantan Bhatt, Jasbir Jassi, Gurmoh and Jasleen Royal with lyrics written by Kumaar, Manoj Muntashir, Kunwar Juneja and Bagchi. Produced on a budget of inr 800000000, the film was distributed internationally by Zee Studios.

The film was released in India during the Holi festival, on 21 March 2019. It received positive reviews from critics; it had a good start at the box office, while the opening day morning collection was affected by Holi-related celebrations. The film grossed over ₹100 crore worldwide in its opening weekend. It grossed over ₹200 crore worldwide in its fourth week and found a place in the list of top ten highest grossing Bollywood films of 2019.

Plot
Kesari depicts the events leading to the Battle of Saragarhi, a battle between the British Indian Army and Pashtun tribesmen. During the battle that was fought in the region that today lies in the northern part of Pakistan and Afghanistan, 21 soldiers of the 36th Sikhs of the British Indian Army held off 6,000–10,000 Afridi and Orakzai tribesmen in a heroic last stand.

Maharaja Ranjit Singh had built the Sikh empire in North and North West India. His empire borders with Afghanistan. He had built many forts along the Afghan border for the safety of the kingdom. The Sikh forces kept the Afghans in check. When the British took over India, they deployed Sikh Troops in the Afghan borders.

Havaldar Ishar Singh is a part of the Sikh Regiment of British Indian Army posted at Gulistan fort along the Indian Afghan border. Ishar Singh's immediate superior British officer is jealous of him because of his superior fighting skills and thinks lowly about the native Indians, deeming them to be cowards. While just returning from a border patrol, the troop sees a group of Afghan tribesmen trying to kill a married Afghani woman who does not acknowledge her forceful marriage and got caught in the process of running away. The tribesmen led by a Mullah named Saidullah were about to kill the woman in the Afghan Territory as the Sikhs watched just across a ridge on the Indian border. Ishar Singh saves the woman by killing her husband, thereby disobeying his immediate superior British officer.

Once the troop reaches the base fort, the British officer reports Ishar Singh's disobedience to his Commanding Officer who sits at the nearby Lockhart fort, and was on his way to the Gulistan Fort. The Afghans attack Gulistan fort, but are thwarted by Ishar Singh who fights valiantly, killing many Afghans.

Ishar Singh is punished and transfered to Saragarhi Fort. Saragarhi fort sits between Gulistan and Lockhart fort and enables communication between them. When Ishar Singh's transfer orders are issued,the officer who had reported him, humiliates him by calling the Indians cowards and slaves to the British. Keeping in mind not to get into further trouble, Ishar Singh does not rebuke him and travels to Saragarhi fort. As he leaves the base Fort, the Afghani woman he had rescued earlier offers him a sweet (Mithai) as a token of gratitude. Ishar Singh fondly remembers his wife on his way to Saragarhi.

As Ishar Singh reaches the Sargarhi Fort to take charge, he finds the troop in a mess. He enforces discipline in the troop by punishing all to live without food for an entire week. The troop initially is furious at such a first action of an Officer-in-charge, but later respects Ishar Singh on learning that he too was living without food. Among the troop was one named Gurmukh Singh who knew English. Naik Lal Singh was Ishar Singh's second in command. Khuda Daad is a Pathan who works as the fort cook and orderly. The rest of the troop consists of unruly yet lovable Sepoys whom Ishar Singh comes to love.

Meanwhile, Saidullah forms an alliance between the Afghan tribes and motivates them to mount an attack on the Indian Territories as an unified force. Ishar Singh and Lal Singh go to a nearby village in search of their informant who hadn't reported to them since 3 days. They came to know that the youth from the village had enlisted for war. The village is left with kids, old men and women. The village Mosque needs repairing. Ishar Singh motivates his men to help the villagers build the mosque. The Sikhs are initially reluctant. But then they realised that the foundation of one Gurdwara was laid by a Muslim Saint. Learning this,the troop has a change of heart and help Ishar Singh accomplish the task, thereby winning the heart of the villagers.

The British Commanding Officer from Lockhart fort sees the Afghan Forces marching towards Sargarhi and alerts Ishar about the same. Ishar Singh and his men received the message and saw thousands of tribesmen encircling Sargarhi Fort. They have also alerted the Gulistan Fort. The tribesmen were around ten thousand. They cut off routes of reinforcement to Sargarhi Fort. The Mullah, with the entire Afghan army at his back, kills the woman whom Ishar Singh had rescued earlier in front of the Sargarhi Fort. Ishar Singh tells the Regiment that the Commanding Officer has ordered the Sikh Troops to abandon the fort and flee. The Sikhs laugh listening the order of fleeing and make clear their intent of fighting till their death. One of the lance Naik Chanda Singh doubts the leadership capabilities of Ishar Singh, who in response, wears his personal saffron turban and motivates the force to fight the Afghans in the name of Pride, Religion and Country (Free India) and not because they are employed as sepoys in the British Indian Army. Kesari means saffron in Hindustani.

The Afghans start playing the battle drum beat. Ishar Singh starts playing his own beat, causing the sync of the Afghans to break. Ishar Singh deploys his force in position. Gurmukh Singh, during a confrontation with Ishar Singh asks why he had told the Regiment that the order was to flee when the Commanding Officer had ordered them to fight. Ishar Singh replies that the British consider the Indians as slaves and the act of Sikhs refusing the order to flee and fighting till death against a numerically far superior enemy on their own free will proves the dignity of Indians. Before the beginning of the battle, Khuda Daad volunteers to fight but Ishar Singh asks him to provide water to all soldiers, both Sikhs and Afghans when they are thirsty and it would be the greatest service in the theatre of war.

The attack is started by the Afghans. Bhagwan Singh is the first to be martyred. Gurmukh Singh was an inexperienced soldier, hence he is unable to fight. So Ishar Singh asks him to keep the CO updated regarding the battle scenario. Information is received that a British division would arrive by next day. Despite being aware of absolute death, Ishar Singh decides to prolong the battle so that the Afghans couldn't advance to the Gulistan and Lockhart forts. The war is stopped for a brief period when the Afghani Chieftains and Ishar Singh have a word about the war. Meanwhile, after the dialogue, Ishar Singh releases 2 Afghani attackers caught by the Sikhs who secretly try to explode the fort with grenades. A huge explosion takes place as the two attackers were themselves attached with grenades. Ishar Singh also kills a marksman by attaching his monocular into his gun and thereby exactly targeting him hiding in between two big rocks. A few Pathans start attacking the main gate of the fort, and the Sikhs answer them with bullets followed by a hand to hand brawl. They attack the Pathans with bayonets and Indian clubs, causing the Afghanis to cower away. As the Sikhs carry the injured inside the fort, the Afghans shoot them. Lal Singh alone fights them outside the fort and dies while asking one of the sepoys to close the gate to the fort. Meanwhile, the Pathans manage to destroy the back wall of the fort using explosives. Only three Sikhs remain. Ishar Singh orders Gurmukh to send a message to his old superior who had humiliated him with expletives. Gurmukh Singh messages the same expletives to the British officer.

Ishar Singh removes the stripes from his uniform, takes out a red-hot sword from the fire and remembers his wife for one last time. As the Afghanis enters the fort, an Afghani attacker is killed by Ishar, who stabs him with the sword and lifts him in the air with it. Ishar Singh keeps on fighting. He gets injured by multiple blows, and finally the kid whom he had spared delivers a fatal blow. While Ishar Singh succumbs to his wounds, Khuda Daad, who was providing drinking water to the dying soldiers is killed by Saidullah. As soon as he tries to remove Ishar Singh's turban, Ishar Singh grabs his collar and plunges a curved blade into his neck, killing the Mullah instantly. The Afghan chieftain, impressed by Ishar Singh's bravery, warns his men not to touch any Sikh's turban and asks what his name was, saying he will always remember him. The Afghans realised that their plan to take all the three forts by evening has failed, and that they have no choice but to retreat. One of the Afghan chieftain named Gul Badshah orders the signalling post to be lit up as he couldn't digest the defeat and thus wants to hear the young Gurmukh Singh scream with pain as a consolation. Gurmukh Singh had written the name of all the martyrs (including his own) on the fort wall with coal. As the Afghans set the post on fire, Gurmukh Singh comes out of his post with his body on fire. He chants "Bole so nihaal sat shri akal" thrice, grabs Gul Badshah and triggers the grenades attached to his body, resulting in a huge explosion. The shout reaches both the nearby forts. The Sikh soldiers present there also start chanting in the name of their Guru.

All the 21 Soldiers of 36th Sikh Regiment died in the battle of Sargarhi. The British Parliament honoured the martyrs with a silence of two minutes. Ishar Singh was awarded Victoria Cross - the highest battle honour in the British Empire. The Battle of Saragarhi will always be remembered as one of the greatest and the bravest last stands in military history.

Cast

 * Akshay Kumar as Hav. Ishar Singh
 * Parineeti Chopra as Jeevani Kaur
 * Vivek Saini as Sep. Jiwan Singh
 * Vikram Kochhar as Sep. Gulab Singh
 * Suvinder Vicky as Nk. Lal Singh
 * Vansh Bharadwaj as L/Nk. Chanda Singh
 * Ravinder Pawar as Sep. Attar Singh
 * Sumeet Singh Basra as Sep. Gurmukh Singh
 * Ajit Singh Mahela as Sep. Nand Singh
 * Sandeep Nahar as Sep. Buta Singh
 * Harvinder Singh as Sep. Daya Singh
 * Rakesh Sharma as Sep. Bhola Singh
 * Adhrit Sharma as Sep. Uttam Singh
 * Harbhagwan Singh as Sep. Bhaghwan Singh
 * Rajdeep Singh Dhaliwal as Sep. Ram Singh
 * Gurpreet Toti as Sep. Saheb Singh
 * Harry Brar as Sep. Sunder Singh
 * Pali Sandhu as Sep. Narayan Singh
 * Vikram Singh Chauhan as Sep. Hira Singh
 * Gugneet Singh as Sep. Jiwan Singh
 * Jaspreet Singh as Taklu
 * Toranj Kayvon as Gulwarien
 * Edward Sonnenblick as Lt. Lawrence
 * Mir Sarwar as Khan Masud
 * Ashwath Bhatt as Gul Badshah Khan
 * Rakesh Chaturvedi as Mullah Saidullah
 * Brahma Mishra as Daad

Development
In 2017, Salman Khan and Karan Johar announced that they would be producing a film together based on the Battle of Saragarhi starring Akshay Kumar in the lead role. Media reports later speculated Khan left the project in favour of a similarly themed film starring Ajay Devgn, and in October that year, Johar and Kumar announced a statement about their collaboration on the film; that Khan had quit the film, and that it would be titled Kesari. Parineeti Chopra was confirmed for a minor role as the deceased wife of Kumar's character.

Principal photography
Principal photography began on 5 January 2018 and finished on 31 December 2018. The film was produced on a budget of ₹80–126 crore.

Soundtrack
The music of the film is composed by Tanishk Bagchi, Arko Pravo Mukherjee, Chirantan Bhatt, Jasbir Jassi, Gurmoh and Jasleen Royal with lyrics written by Kumaar, Manoj Muntashir, Kunwar Juneja and Tanishk Bagchi.

Marketing and release
Kumar released Kesari's first look poster on 12 September 2018, through Twitter. Another poster was released on India's Republic Day, 26 January 2019. The film's theatrical poster was released on 11 February 2019.

The following day, Dharma Productions released three videos titled "Glimpses of Kesari" on their YouTube channel, detailing the film's production. A second theatrical release poster for Kesari was released on 20 February 2019. The official trailer of the film was released on Dharma Productions' YouTube channel the next day.

The first song of the film "Sanu Kehndi" was released on 27 February 2019,the second one "Teri Mitti" was released on 15 March 2019 and the full album was released on 18 March 2019.

Kesari was released worldwide during the Indian Holi festival, on 21 March 2019. It had a release on 4200 screens worldwide, 3600 screens of which were in India and the rest overseas.

Home video
Kesari was made available as VOD on Prime Video in May 2019.

Critical response
Nandini Ramnath of Scroll.in writes, "Sluggishly paced until the interval and springing to life only in fits and starts in the second half, Kesari is a poor attempt to revisit a chapter in Indian military history that earned the admiration even of British colonisers." Rachit Gupta of The Times of India gave Kesari four stars out of five, praising its "technical brilliance, intricate writing and thundering performances". Taran Adarsh gave it four stars and felt it "[c]hronicles a significant chapter from history brilliantly... Nationalism, patriotism, heroism, scale and soul - Kesari has it all". Writing for Times Now, Gaurang Chauhan rated the film three and a half stars out of five and opined, "Kesari is not the best patriotic film or an action film to come out of Bollywood, but it surely is worth the time and money". Bollywood Hungama rated it four stars out of five, remarking, "On the whole, Kesari is a brave and inspirational tale of courage, with patriotism and the dramatic battle sequences being the USP of the film".

Box office
Kesari opened with collection of ₹21.50 crore on its first day. It is the highest opening day collection of 2019 for Bollywood films released so far. The collection of extended weekend of the film is ₹78.07 crore, which is the highest opening weekend collection of 2019 for Bollywood films released as yet. Its domestic gross was ₹182.30 crore and overseas gross ₹ 22.52 crore. It has grossed ₹204.82 crore worldwide. The film grossed over ₹100 crore worldwide in its opening weekend. It became the fastest ₹100 crore earning film in domestic net in 2019 for Bollywood films released as yet. It eventually grossed over ₹200 crore worldwide in its fourth week and is fourth highest Bollywood grosser of year 2019.