Mars Orbiter Mission “Mangalyaan’ was India’s first interplanetary expedition, which was successfully launched on 5th November 2013 and it entered the orbit on 23rd September 2014. Thanks to thousands of Indian Space Research Organisation scientists, who contributed to this successful mission on 1st attempt. Now, Cape of Good Films , Hope Productions, Fox Star Studios, Aruna Bhatia, and Anil Naidu have jointly produced a film ‘Mission Mangal’ directed by Jagan Shakti which is a semi-biographical account of the actual project team which contributed to make it a grand success.
In this film, we find a team comprising of space scientists from ISRO Rakesh Dhavan (Akshay Kumar), Tara Shinde(Vidya Balan), Kritika Agarwal(Taapsee Pannu), Varsha Pillai (Nithya Menon), ( Neha Siddiqui( Kirti Kulhari), Prathamesh Naidu( Sharman Joshi), Eka Gandhi(Sonakshi Sinha) & Anant Iyer (H. G. Dattatreya) coming together for this Mars Mission assigned to them. After their team leader Rakesh manages to get the sanction of budget from the director of ISRO ( Vikram Gokhale) in spite of hurdles from NASA returned Sr. Scientist Rupert Desai ( Dalip Tahil) he starts the work with his associate and Senior scientist Tara. But, they don’t find their team members responding with total commitment. In fact, all of them have a negative approach.
Taking up this a s the biggest challenge, they first instill confidence in them using their methodology . Once they are on the same wavelength, the momentum picks up and the outcome of their hard work as a team is what makes the entire country proud. Writer R. Balki, Jagan Shakti and director Jagan Shakti have just not shown the success story of the scientists led by Akshay Kumar but they have also shown the lifestyle of all his assistants and more particularly the hardships countered by his immediate assistant while showing her commitment to her work besides managing her family. Very cleverly the film maker has shown how important it is to show total involvement in work in this challenging profession.
From start to finish the film’s screenplay keeps the audience engaged . And therefore, this inspiring subject of this film connects well with the audience. Performances by all these lead artistes are superb. It was nice to see Sanjay kapoor after a long time, in the role of Tara’s husband . Technically it is a well presented film with wonderful visual effects and suitable background music to give a realistic look. Certainly a worth watch film for all. Don’t miss it.
Rating ( ****)