At the outset, Runway 34 comes across as a partial remake of the award-winning Denzel Washington film Flight (2012), which was based on a seasoned pilot preventing his commercial flight from crashing but who was investigated for possibly consuming alcohol and drugs.
“Inspired by true events” does some Fargo-esque heavy lifting in this Ajay Devgn directorial and starring effort, as we are introduced to his character, ace pilot Vikrant Khanna. Khanna has an eidetic memory with over 16,000 flight hours to his name, but has been flying for six consecutive days and wants to return home.
So the night before his soon-to-be Dubai-to-Kochi flight, he takes the edge off by joining his friend in a long night of clubbing and binge drinking, setting up what’s to come during the flight as the sleep-deprived Khanna makes some risky decisions under inclement weather conditions.
The flight itself does occasionally live up to the survivalist thrills Runway 34 promises but the screenplay and Devgn’s direction are its worst enemy, as horrendous attempts at comedy, featuring a cameo appearance from Youtuber CarryMinati, get in the way. As a result, the big miracle landing moment has long since been cheapened since any attempt to get you invested in the characters’ fates falls flat.
Also read: Hindi not national language. Ajay Devgn ‘stunt’ comes at time of RRR, KGF, Pushpa megahits
Overshooting the runway
The central problem with Runway 34 is its disjointedness, as it wastes its 148-minute runtime by overstuffing the narrative. The flight sequence is put together with a cheesy Amitabh Bachchan-led investigative drama and an underdeveloped subplot, featuring Boman Irani and Angira Dhar, about the airline’s financial situation.
Amid all these big names, however, the only decent performance in the film comes from Rakul Preet Singh, who plays Khanna’s copilot Tanya Albuquerque.
Once you get past the tired jokes about her surname’s syllables and the connections to the American city, you see a realistic and relatable depiction of a competent yet inexperienced pilot who tries her best to deal with an arrogant senior but suffers a panic attack when the situation begins to look fatal.
Albuquerque’s character arc is ultimately a refreshing break from Bachchan constantly reminding us of his bilingual thesaurus prowess in front of an Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) jury, and Irani and Dhar’s lazily written scheming to kill the investigation and save the company from Bachchan’s probing questions.
As uncreative as this sounds, Runway 34 perhaps would have worked better as a straight remake of Flight. But then Devgn’s character would have to actually and honestly engage with his deep personal flaws instead of simply indulging in some faux-heroic spiel about him caring too much about his career and his passengers’ safety. But we can’t risk such nuanced depictions, can we? In a manner as unconvincing as Devgn’s arguments when promoting Hindi as the national language, Runway 34 has time to throw in some supposedly miraculous twists in the film’s third act.
With a more talented director and writing team, we could have had an interesting, introspective look into homesickness, stress or systemic failures in the aviation space. Instead, what we get is yet another average at best mainstream film that justifies its protagonist’s transgressions through messages like, “The country doesn’t deserve to lose its biggest talent”.
The next “true story” Devgn will dramatise this summer is Maidaan, a biopic on coach Syed Abdul Rahim who presided over the golden age of Indian football. Since Amit Sharma of Badhaai Ho fame is behind the camera there, one can only hope that he and Devgn stick the landing.