Filmmaker JP Dutta’s LOC’ “Kargil’ longest film proved a big debacle at box-office

Markedly,,OTT revolution has transformed a lot in Indian cinema, from the scale of some films to their durations as well.

At an era, when Indian films would have a dozen songs, the runtimes were routinely over three hours long. But even then, the longest Indian film ever made was much longer by those standards too, running at 4 hours and 15 minutes long, filled with 43 lead actors, and yet was still a flop

Notedly, JP Dutta’s LOC Kargil has the distinction of being the longest Indian feature film and by default, the longest film made in Bollywood as well.

The war drama had a runtime of 4 hours and 15 minutes (255 minutes). What made the film special was its loaded star cast. Hoping to capitalise on the success of his previous war film Border, Dutta decided to make a film on all the major battles of the Kargil War.

This is why the film had a runtime this long as many as 43 actors in the lead role with 33 of them playing real-life war heroes.

The cast comprised Ajay Devgn, Sanjay Dutt, Saif Ali Khan, Suniel Shetty, Abhishek Bachchan, Nagarjuna, Manoj Bajpayee, Kareena Kapoor, Rani Mukerji, Raveena Tandon, and many others.

But the presence of all these stars as well as some memorable music could not save LOC Kargil from being a box office bomb. The film, made on a sizable budget of Rs 33 crore, was released in theatres on December 12, 2003.

However, after massive opening, its performance at the box office dipped due to bad reviews and negative word of mouth. In the end, LOC Kargil earned only Rs 31.60 crore, unable to recover its budget.

Many of the big stars in the film weren’t impacted by its failure. Names like Ajay, Saif, Abhishek, and Nagarjuna went on to make more films and add feathers to their hats.

Yet, some of the newer and well-established actors bore the brunt of the film’s failures. Actors including Karan Nath, Armaan Kohli, Puru Raajkumar, Shahzad Khan, Amar Upadhyay, Bikram Saluja, Vineet Sharma, Deepak Jethi, Priya Gill, Akanksha Malhotra, and Akbar Naqvi hardly found work after this film flopped. Most of them faded into obscurity after LOC Kargil.

News Edit K.V.Raman