When he came on board Shershaah, Sidharth Malhotra knew his first obligation was towards the late Captain Vikram Batra and his family. With the Amazon Prime Video offering slated to premiere tomorrow, the actor says, “The family’s is the only review I am nervous about. I owe it to them to do my best and give them a version that does justice to their son’s story.” He adds that Batra’s brother Vishal had seen the earlier cut of the biopic. “He got emotional and said ‘I had already seen my brother off duty. But in my mind, I couldn’t [conjure] a visual of him fighting for the country. Now, when I think of [him on duty], I see your visuals from the film in my mind.’”

Helmed by Vishnu Vardhan, the film celebrates the valour of the Param Vir Chakra awardee, who, at 24, was martyred during the 1999 Kargil War. Malhotra says the team was mindful of not falling into the tropes of a larger-than-life Bollywood movie. “It was a conscious effort to play the character authentically. It would lose its appeal if I portrayed him like a typical hero. The attempt was to make it a part-documentary, part-Hindi film. The idea was to make it close to reality, and yet keep his heroism intact. Even the filmy dialogues used in the trailer are the actual lines that Vikram Batra had said.” 

Of late, war dramas in Hindi cinema tend to have a jingoistic approach. But the actor insists they have actively steered away from adopting the tone in the Kiara Advani-starrer. “Sandeep Shrivastava [writer], Vishnu Vardhan, Dharma Productions and I have consciously made an effort that the scenes do not digress from his life story. You cannot sugar-coat war. There [was] a battle; we fought with our neighbouring country, and whatever interactions they had with the enemy are documented. Our attempt is to [evoke] a sense of patriotism or inspiration through Batra’s life and his comrades. It has got less to do with the enemy or the politics, and more to do with what went on in the [soldiers’] heads and hearts.”