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

Filmmaker JP Dutta’s LOC’ “Kargil’ most elongated film proved 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 running time of the film stretches to over three hours. long. But as early as that, the longest Indian film ever made was much longer by those standards too, running at 4 hours and 15 minutes, filled with 43 lead actors, and yet proved a debacle at the box-office.

Reportedly, JP Dutta’s LOC Kargil bears the distinction of emerging as the most elongated Indian feature film and by default, the lenghty film made in Bollywood as well.

The war drama had a runtime of 4 hours and 15 minutes (255 minutes). What made the film ‘exclusive’ was its loaded star cast. Hoping to cash-in-on the success of his earlier 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 ironically, the presence of even 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, saw its theatrical release on December 12, 2003.

However, following 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.

The failure of the film, however, never impacted many of the big stars in the film like Ajay Devgn, Saif Ali Khan, Abhishek Bachchan and Nagarjuna who all 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