Every creator will have own share of inspiration from surroundings before setting him(or)herself on a creative job. Likewise, young writer cum director Sankalp Reddy’s imagination of presenting the Indian audience with an untold story of undersea submarine war between India (S21) and Pakistan (PNS Ghazi) happened in 1971 with torpedo shootouts arrived before us in the name of ‘Ghazi’ released last week and is running to impressive collections in all three Telugu, Hindi and Tamil languages.
Yes, there was no domestic cross references for Sankalp to design submarine CG. But, content wise he was very strong because rivalry between India and Pakistan is forever saleable. However, the basic conflict which runs off in between analytical, cautiously approaching Lieutenant Arjun Verma (Rana) and impulsive, intuitive approaching Rann Vijay Singh (Kay Kay Menon) or Executive Officer Dhanraj (Atul Kulkarni) character design, themeatic and scene essence in first half are largely ripped off from Oscar Awards winning 1995 American submarine film ‘Crimson Tide.’
While ‘Crimson Tide’ runs in Chechenya conflict backdrop, ‘Ghazi’ is changed to Indo-Pak. Rana is more of Denzel Washington, Kay Kay Menon is of Gene Hackman and sending, decoding of radio electronic analog signals is dealt as it is from the original. Nevertheless, ‘Ghazi’ second half is completely different from what we have in ‘Crimson Tide.’
However, you also cannot neglect the influences of 'K-19 Widowmaker, U 571' and 'The Hunt for Red October' in Ghazi.