The reason why Rang De Basanti has found such deep resonance with its audience is that it cuts through this haze of angst and ennui that's been hanging over us - and strikes dead centre. It addresses the question you've been meaning to ask: "How did we stray this far?" And it questions the powerlessness you offer in response. Like Madhavan, the air force pilot in the film says, "Ya to bardasht karo, ya zimedaari lo."
Director, Rakeysh Mehra, takes you to a place where two timelines intersect. There's a proud yesterday, where men no more than 20, walked tall and "Mai rang de basanti chola" was not just the song of a bard - it was a call to arms. Then there's today. A wasteland of disposable values. No, the faces haven't changed. Almost everything else has. Mehra executes this journey with rare passion - and it strikes like a fist in the heart.
Ironically, it takes a young British documentary filmmaker, Sue (Alice Patten), to bring it home. Sue is fired up enough by those tales of valour to come down to India, to make a documentary on the national heroes.
But what she wings into, is a new, changed, India. This here is a cynical 'Who cares a fig', SMS generation, with a total amnesia about its past. Vacuous faces with no real idea where they came from. Then she meets this band of renegades. Aslam (Kunal Kapoor) who's clawed his way out of the dingy airless existence of a family still locked up in hatred; Karan (Siddharth), who tries to heal the emotional adhesions inflicted by a rich, corrupt, wheeler-dealer father by lavishing his 'baap ka paisa' on needy friends; Atul Kulkarni, whose version of rashtriya swabhimaan excludes anything that's not painted over in saffron. There's the clean-shaven Nihang Sikh, DJ (if there can ever be such a thing!) the King of the Campus (Aamir Khan), who's afraid of stepping out into the real world. And there's Sukhi (Sharman Joshi), who's afraid. Of life itself.

The merry band is truly adrift. The only one among them who has a sense of purpose is Ajay (Madhavan). And he's just passing through on his way to bigger things. He's also engaged to Sonia (Soha Ali Khan), the other buddy in the group. They're willing to risk lives in trivial pursuits, like free falls after beer-guzzling orgies or harrowing bike chases through New Delhi's ridge roads. But they've never met this thing called 'A Cause'.
Then Sue hands them her film and the costumes. Things begin to change. From the outside in.
The film's first half is so electrifying, it runs like fire through your veins…you're looking forward to the Final Awakening - to what? That's where Mehra drops the plot.

They go in search of a cause lofty enough to match the freedom struggle. But what they offer is a very bad stencil. It's a sort of Akashwani meets Tiananmen square, with a Radio Mirchi-like phone-in thrown in. The climax is truly perplexing...
It is to the filmmaker's credit that the first half of the film holds you so completely under its spell, that you come away, pretending the second half never happened.
The camera work is cutting edge, the acting exceptional, the dialogue absolutely slice of life. But the one thing that stands out is Rang De Basanti's lyrics. Not since Guru Dutt's films have songs added so much emotional charge to a film. Though Prasoon Joshi may not have equalled Sahir Ludhianvi's genius, he comes within touching distance, especially with Rubaroo, the film's real anthem.