How much nationalism is too much nationalism?

We need to ask this question today more than ever. Especially after watching a film that falls in the category of ‘militainment’. This particular film makes for a rather uncomfortable case study. The hullaballoo over the ‘surgical strikes’ – a much abused phrase now synonymous with the Indian Army’s cross-border operation undertaken on 29 September 2016 – makes it difficult to not see it as another element of nationalism blitzkrieg.

Uri: The Surgical Strike, however, is an oddball in an increasingly polarised socio-political and cultural stratosphere, that in no time, trickles down to the grassroots.

How can a war film be made without a liberal dose of jingoism? How can the most politicised military operation of our times be cinematically depicted minus a ballistic rhetoric on what a nationalist government ought to do? Most importantly, how can a film based on real events, involving real people, resist the urge to turn the latter into caricatures?

Uri accomplishes all that and more.