Kandahar (2010 film)

Plot

Suryanatha Sharma (Ganesh Venkatraman) is an educated, unemployed man. His father, Lokanatha Sharma (played by Amitabh Bachchan), wants to see his son victorious in life. Things change when he meets Major Mahadevan (Mohanlal). It's another mission with Mahadevan and crew, as they deal with international terrorism with a flight being hijacked by hardcore terrorists.

Cast

Development

Kandahar is the third film in the "Major Mahadevan series", the previous ones being Kirtichakra (2006) and Kurukshetra (2008). Kirtichakra was a runaway success in Kerala, and Kurukshetra was a superhit. Jeeva played a supporting role in Kirtichakra and Siddique in Kurukshetra. This time Ganesh Venkatraman is playing the supporting role. Surya was supposed to do the role but was replaced by Ganesh when he opted out of the project due to date clashes with 7aam Arivu.

Casting

Mohanlal plays the lead role and is the film's producer. Several other artists from Tamil cinema were initially approached to play secondary leads as well, including Suriya and Arun Vijay, who all cited date conflicts. Later, Ganesh Venkatraman was finalized for a role. Amitabh Bachchan was approached for a major role in the film, and he immediately agreed. Even though he did not ask for any remuneration for his appearance, he was offered a whopping 8 crores. His son in Kandahar is played by Ganesh Venkatraman. Later, model Ragini Dwivedi was signed up to play a supporting role. There were reports that Parvathy Omanakuttan was also cast in the film.

Locations

At a press conference, Major Ravi reported that the aeroplane sequences of the film would be shot in Russia. Other locations include Ooty and New Delhi.

Release

The film was released on 16 December 2010 in 111 theatres in Kerala, 9 theatres in Bengaluru, 5 theatres in Chennai, and around 18 theatres in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Hyderabad. Kandahar has collected ₹ 5.25 crores revenue from before releasing through selling satellite rights, audio rights, video rights, overseas distribution rights, and theatre advances.

Reception

Kandahar received negative reviews upon release. Though it was one of the most-awaited films of the year, it failed to attain a good word-of-mouth. A review by Sify, which rated it "below average" said, "There are moments when every Indian would feel proud about being born in this great land, but the shaky script, ordinary action sequences and a faulty climax lets the film down." Rediff published a nearly negative review saying, "A better script would have perhaps made the return of Major Mahadevan more appealing." It rated the film 2.5 in a scale of five. OneIndia gave the movie a 3/5 rating, MMDb gave a rating of 2/5 and so did Now Running a 2/5.

Accolades

Soundtrack

The soundtrack features five songs composed by Shamir Tandon, who is known for his compositions in Madhur Bhandarkar's films, with lyrics by Sandeep Nath, Vayalar Sarath Chandra Varma, Sudhakar Sharma, and Kaushal Kishor.