A review on Pakistani Sci-fi Thriller feature length film, Project Ghazi (2019). The Production House is GYR Films while its Distributor is Distribution Club.
+ Crew
- Directed by Nadir Shah
- Written & Produced by Syed Mohammed Ali Raza
- Director of Photography by Farhan Hafeez
- Edited by Hassnain Jaffery and Abdur Rahman
- Visual Effects & Color Grading by Lucid Studios and Sharp Image
+Note
Project Ghazi is considered first Pakistani superhero movie that revolves around a thread to the project soldiers. It’s a story about ASP (Advanced Soldier Project) and it spans over a period of 20 years. The word Ghazi refers to Hero & Conqueror. The production designer is Javaria Salar while its music is composed by Armaghan Shahid. Some of the character names given, belong to the crew members’ real first/last names.
This film was initially scheduled for release on 14th July 2017. But at the premiere night at Karachi, a day before its general release, it got very negative feedback from critics & audience. It had problem with its audio and other technical stuff, so the makers decided not to release the movie in the theaters before fixing these problems first.
Humayun Saeed, one of the lead stars had said in 2017 premiere, “I couldn’t let this be the final product of Project Ghazi. The audience couldn’t be shown this. How can people judge a movie that they couldn’t even hear properly? I just couldn’t bear it, I left within 20 minutes, thinking if I can’t understand it how will anyone else.”
Project Ghazi was finally released on 29th March 2019, only to be taken off after a couple of days later.
+ Main Cast
- Humayun Saeed as Col. Salaar Salahuddin
- Sheheryar Munawar as Major Zain Zulfiqar
- Syra Shehroz as Zara Iftikhar
- Adnan Jaffar as Qataan
- Talat Hussain as Dr. Ziyaad
- Amir Qureshi as Major Dilawar
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+ Supporting Cast
- Nasir Inayat Khan as Brigadier Taimur
- Nusrat Hidayutullah as Qataan’s Minion
- Raza Hyder as Col. Armaghan
- Vaajdan Shah as Lead Interrogator
- Hanif Bachan as Hostage
+ Plot
A group of scientists and soldiers are trying to develop a new breed of advanced weaponized soldiers known as Project Ghazi. However, a group of rogue men try to seize it for their personal schemes. Col. Salaar teams up with Maj. Zain, to combat them in order to avoid a bigger disaster ahead.
+ High Points
i – I am so pleased to know that the time length is approximately 100 minutes only.
ii – Maj. Dilawar is the only interesting character to watch. But he is given very limited screen time.
+ Low Points
i – Any experienced actor, director would know the level of this film during its post-production stages, long before its release. Instead of ‘Correcting / Fixing’ the flaws in the span of two years, they could actually make a proper new film in order to save their faces and have some real earnings. The reason is that what they have released now (after two years), the film is so bad that they took it off in just of couple of days.
ii – Once again, the core element is flawed. Bad writing of this film consists of no proper story structure, hardly any character development, no sub plots, the list goes on.
iii – Everything is pretty much straight forward, without putting up with real challenges or conflicts for the protagonist to face.
iv – At first, the concept may look good on paper. But then you would realize that its very similar to Captain America (2011). And the fact that the people behind the film, Captain America knew exactly what they were doing. How they be able to execute it properly and be able to connect with their audience. On the other hand, Project Ghazi is just the opposite.
v – The writer fails to establish the emotional link with his characters to the audience. The result is that we don’t have any issue whether the on-screen character lives or dies.
vi – I am not sure that if it’s the fault of the editor or the actual film is shot without proper continuation of scenes and jump cuts.
vii – There are so much usage of visual effects that its hard to tell which were actual set design.
viii – The action scenes tried to make similar to Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014). One would notice it right away. In this film, the fight choreography is just rubbish.
ix – Sometimes, having 1 – 2 songs help the film to gain some interest especially for those who may have slept by now. But in this film, there are none.
+ Overall
Project Ghazi is a feature length film of deleted scenes.
Rate: 0 out of 5 stars
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