Kay Kay Menon enunciates his lines through clenched teeth like he is trying to crack a walnut with his jaw, and honestly, it works for about the first twenty minutes before the novelty starts wearing thin. We are underwater for almost the entirety of The Ghazi Attack, breathing recycled air in a rusted Pakistani submarine or a slightly less rusted Indian one, and if I am honest, the sheer claustrophobia of the sets does half the heavy lifting for the drama. Sankalp Reddy directs his debut feature with the sort of dogged, utilitarian focus usually reserved for instructional videos on plumbing, keeping his camera jammed into tight corners, tracking grease-stained bulkheads and dripping ceiling pipes as depth charges bloom outside with a wet, heavy thud that rattles the theater seats. There is very little fat on this narrative, which is a relief, though it also means we spend very little time getting to know anyone outside of their military function, reducing human beings to a collection of titles like Executive Officer, Commander, and Intelligence Officer.

Rana Daggubati plays Lieutenant Commander Arjun Varma, the stoic observer sent aboard the S21 to monitor operations, and he spends most of the runtime standing behind the periscope with a look of permanent concern painted across his features. Daggubati is not an actor given to sudden outbursts of theatricality, which serves a procedural war film reasonably well, even if his performance occasionally blurs into the background scenery alongside the sonar equipment. He shares a peculiar dynamic with Kay Kay Menon’s Captain Ranvijay Singh, a loose-cannon naval officer who treats the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war like a personal score to settle. Singh is the kind of salt-crusted commander who rips up rulebooks and barks orders about preemptive strikes while junior officers sweat through their collars, a character archetype we have seen countless times in Hollywood productions like Crimson Tide, yet Menon invests enough twitchy, obsessive energy into the role that you stop caring about the familiarity of the blueprint. Taapsee Pannu pops up occasionally as a Bangladeshi refugee rescued from a torpedoed civilian vessel, but her role is so paper-thin that she exists purely to give the male characters something noble to protect during lulls in the sonar pinging. It is a small thing, but it bugged me how her hair remains impossibly voluminous and clean despite days spent trapped in a flooded torpedo bay while depth charges rain down, a minor continuity slip that breaks the illusion of grit.

The script by Reddy, alongside the writers who adapted his original story, treats history with a straight face and avoids the hysterical flag-waving that usually sinks contemporary Bollywood movies when they attempt patriotic narratives. Instead of cutting away to political backrooms in Delhi or Islamabad to explain the geopolitical stakes, the film stays stubbornly bolted to the floor of the Bay of Bengal, letting the dialogue consist almost entirely of depth calculations, bearing adjustments, and frantic status reports shouted over klaxons. Rahul Singh plays the Pakistani submarine commander Razzaq Khan with a grim, exhausted professionalism that resists cartoonish villainy, portraying a career soldier just trying to keep his vessel from imploding under intense pressure. That restraint prevents the picture from degenerating into predictable jingoism, grounding the conflict in mechanical competence and tactical chess moves rather than ideological screaming matches.

Visually, the CGI ranges from surprisingly convincing to the kind of rubbery video-game rendering that makes you wince, particularly during exterior shots of the submarines gliding through murky green water pursued by British-made destroyer ships. When the budget is constrained, the production design steps up to compensate, utilizing cramped interior sets that smell of damp steel and stale coffee, lit primarily by blinking red warning lights and the pale glow of instrument panels. The sound design deserves a separate mention because the movie lives and dies by its auditory landscape, utilizing the rhythmic ping of sonar and the groaning metal hull to generate tension far more effectively than any orchestral swell could manage. Krishnachaitanya’s music mostly stays out of the way, mercifully sparing us from unnecessary romantic interludes or bloated dance numbers that usually clog up hindi films of this scale, keeping the focus locked onto the ticking clock of oxygen supplies and battery power.

There is an inherent paradox in making an action-thriller about an event that was largely classified and forgotten by the general public, as the real sinking of the PNS Ghazi remains a subject of minor historical debate between two governments. The movie leans into this ambiguity by framing the engagement as a secret duel fought in the shadows, far away from the ticker-tape parades and grand historical pronouncements that dominate standard hindi movies dealing with military heroism. Yet, by stripping away the broader context, the story occasionally feels boxed in by its own premise, cycling through the exact same beats of torpedo evasion and engine room fires three or four times too many before reaching the inevitable climax. It is an efficient machine of a movie that delivers exactly what it promises on the poster without lingering in your thoughts once the projector shuts off and you walk back out into the parking lot.