As JP Dutta Is Back With Paltan, Here’s Recalling His Historic Blockbuster Border Starring Sunny Deol!

The theatrical trailer of Paltan directed by JP Dutta will be unveiled at an event in Mumbai today. With Paltan, Dutta will complete with war trilogy as before this he directed Border and LOC: Kargil. It has been 21 years since the release of Border and the film is still remembered for the iconic dialogues and authenticity of showcasing the war sequences. Be it Sunny Deol, Suniel Shetty, Akshaye Khanna or Jackie Shroff, each and every actor left a mark with a heroic performance.

Border was based on the real-life battle of Longewella from 1971 Indo-Pak War. Dutta’s brother was a real-life pilot who lost his life in MIG Crash in 1987 and the director used real life references in creating some of the crucial moments of the film. The film released on 13th June 1997 and opened to a record response. It raked in approximately Rs 1.13 crores in India on its opening day and was one of the first Hindi films to open above the Rs 1.00 crore mark. Sunny Deol’s star-power and the wave of patriotism were major reasons for the historic opening of the film.

The iconic war drama commanded a positive word of mouth from the audience, who praised the heroism, dialogues, story-line and more importantly the emotional content of the film. The film released on merely 270 screens in India back then and ended its run at the Box-Office at collections in the close to Rs 40.00 crores. The film was the highest grossing Hindi film of 1997, and one of the biggest hits of Sunny Deol’s acting career.

An interesting point to note here is the fact that Sanjay Dutt had come on board to essay the character of Air Force Commander, however he eventually had to leave the film to serve his jail term back then and was replaced by Jackie Shroff. The music of Border was a smash hit and the song “Sandese Aate Hai” established Sonu Nigam as a singer. 21 years after Border, JP Dutta now returns with Paltan starring Jackie Shroff, Arjun Rampal, Gurmeet Choudhary, Sonu Sood, Harshvardhan Rane and Luv Sinha in lead. The film is based on the 1962 Indo-Sino War, and focuses on India’s relation with China during that period.

It would be interesting to see if Dutta recreates the magic of Border again!