Mission Raniganj

November 1989, the Raniganj coalfield in West Bengal. During blasting underground a water seam is pierced and the mine begins to fill. Sixty five miners are trapped. Some are brought out; six are stuck in a chamber where the water is rising. The usual rescue methods will not work; digging would take days and there are not days. The mining engineer Jaswant Singh Gill proposes something else: bore a narrow shaft from the surface and lower a capsule into it. Nobody has tried this. Tinu Suresh Desai directs. Akshay Kumar plays Gill. The event behind the narrative is real: Gill went down with the capsule himself and brought the miners up one by one. The method was later named after him and Gill received a state honour in India. The film's best section is the technical preparation; the making of the capsule, the measurements and the pressure of time are shown in detail. Its problem is formula; the supporting characters are written to raise obstacles and the opposition to bureaucracy is simplified. The underground scenes were built in a studio and the rising water was shot with real water. It took less in India than expected. Who it is for: viewers who like rescue films based on a real event. Who it is not for: the heroic register is high, the dramatic additions many, and the characters one dimensional.