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16 December (film)

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16 December
Directed byMani Shankar
Written byMani Shankar
Produced byAnjali Joshi
Arunima Roy
iDream Production
StarringDanny Denzongpa
Gulshan Grover
Milind Soman
Dipannita Sharma
Sushant Singh
Aditi Govitrikar
CinematographyAjayan Vincent
Music byKarthik Raja
Distributed byiDream Production (through SPE Films India)[1]
Release date
  • 22 March 2002 (2002-03-22)
Running time
158 minutes
CountryIndia
LanguageHindi

16 December is a 2002 Indian Hindi-language action thriller film[2] directed by Mani Shankar, based on a plot to destroy the capital city of India, New Delhi with a nuclear bomb on 16 December 2001 – 30 years after the surrender of Pakistan at the end of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.[3][4][5]

The film's title comes from the historical date of 16 December 1971 (which is also Bangladesh's Victory Day), commemorating the day Pakistan signed the document of Liberation of Bangladesh.

Plot

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Major General Vir Vijay Singh, Vikram, Sheeba, and Victor, who are Indian Revenue Service officers belonging to the Department of Revenue Intelligence and have been wrongly implicated in the killing of their corrupt superior officer and removed from service, are hired by the Chief of the same agency to investigate a series of large money launderings. Vikram and Sheeba share some romance. The team is equipped with hi-tech equipment such as mini spy cameras, computers, the internet, and other communication devices. Through various encounters, they discover that the money is being transferred to a Swiss Bank account. By means of an Indian employee, Sonal Joshi, working in the Auckland, New Zealand, branch of the same bank, they investigate the account in New Zealand and, with her help, find that the money is being transferred to an international terrorist organization named Kaala Khanjar. This organization, working in conjunction with terrorist Dost Khan, manages to smuggle a Russian-made nuclear bomb into India. Dost Khan plans to explode the nuclear uvva on the same day, 16 December.

Although the ruling dictator of Pakistan surrendered unconditionally to India during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, some of the hard-lined Pakistani soldiers were bitter and angry at the surrender, as they wanted to continue fighting the Indians until their last breath. They retreated in silence and later formed their own groups of communal soldiers to carry out terrorist attacks against neighboring India.

Led by Dost Khan, a hardliner Pakistani army officer who, against his wishes, had to surrender after the end of the 1971 war, the terrorists planned to take an act of revenge by having a nuclear explosion in the heart of New Delhi. They transport it into a music competition disguised as a musical instrument. When Vir Vijay Singh discovers the plan, he plans to find out the location of the nuclear bomb as soon as possible by taking the help of remote radiation sensors in satellites and innumerable beggars in the city. This helps the team zero in on the location.

After they overpower most of the terrorists in a commando operation, Dost Khan learns about it and sets the nuclear bomb to explode in a few minutes. This creates a lot of problems for Vijay Vir Singh, as the bomb can be defused only by the exclusive voice command of Dost Khan saying: Dulhan Ki Vidaai Ka Waqt Badalna Hai. They adopt a novel way to do it by speaking to Dost Khan and making him say fragments of this sentence without making him realize that it was being done to defuse the bomb. After the conversation is over, they synthesize the sentence to defuse the bomb just in time.

Cast

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Critical reception

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16 December received mostly positive reviews from critics in India and abroad. Ronjita Kulkarni of Rediff.com gave the movie 5/5 stars and wrote, "For a first-timer, director Mani Shankar does a valiant job with 16 December. It has four songs, three of which appear in the background, but it certainly does not follow the routine song-and-dance formula. 16 December entertains as well makes you think". Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama gave the movie 4/5 stars and wrote, "The film does have a love angle though there is no undue focus on the romantic couple. Now for the film. In 16 December, Mani Shankar has tried to explore white-collar crime. The premise being, millions of rupees leave the Indian shores daily to Swiss bank accounts. The account holders always remain a secret. What the director tries to do is trace this movement of money from the grass-roots level". Rachit Gupta of Filmfare rated the movie 4/5 stars, stating, "16 December moves at a brisk pace. Mani Shankar does not waste time on unnecessary details. The film requires a fair amount of concentration to understand the chain of events". DNA gave the movie 5/5 stars and said that, one of the best Hindi spy films that had ever come out, it is India's equivalent to Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible.

Soundtrack

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16 December
Soundtrack album by
Released16 December 2001
GenreFeature film soundtrack
LabelUniversal Music Group
ProducerKarthik Raja
Karthik Raja chronology
Mitr, My Friend
(2001)
16 December
(2001)
Album
(2002)
# Title Singer(s)
1 "Dil Mera Ek Tara" Sadhana Sargam
2 "Main Cheez Badi Hoon Chaalu" Shaan
3 "I Am A Cool Cat" Shaan, Subhiksha
4 " Dil Ye Tera" KK
5 "Dhuan Dhuan Sa" Milind Soman, Chitra Sivaraman
6 "Chim Chimiya" Sapna Awasthi

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Shedde, Meenakshi (20 April 2003). "Columbia and Fox trot into masala land". The Times of India. Retrieved 31 July 2022.
  2. ^ "16 December (2002) – Mani Shankar". AllMovie.
  3. ^ "Must watch espionage movies of Bollywood". The Times of India.
  4. ^ "rediff.com, Movies: The Rediff Review: 16 December". Rediff.com. Retrieved 29 May 2022.
  5. ^ "16 December review: 16 December (Hindi) Movie Review". Fullhyderabad.com. Retrieved 29 May 2022.
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