Shershaah Vikram Batra’s brother reveals emotional reaction to film, says it took ‘10-12% cinematic liberty’

Kargil War hero Captain Vikram Batra’s twin, Vishal Batra, has revealed what he thought about Shershaah, the biopic starring Sidharth Malhotra, which was released on Amazon Prime Video on Thursday. He said that he has been holding on to an ‘emotional havoc’ inside him, and that he let it out, ‘all alone’, when the film was over. 

Directed by Vishnu Varadhan and co-produced by Karan Johar, Shershaah has been in the making for at least four years. Captain Batra was previously played on screen by Abhishek Bachchan in LOC: Kargil.

In an interview with a leading daily, Vishal Batra said, “It has always been a mixed bag of emotions for me to talk about him. I have been living with those emotions for 22 years. It’s not easy being Vikram’s twin — he was the best brother, confidante, and friend. We shared every bit of our life together. It was a moment of pride for my family and me. We wanted every Indian to know his story, to know the man behind the epithet, Shershaah. There hasn’t been a day when we have not spoken about him. And each time we do that, we tend to miss him even more. I’ve contained an emotional havoc inside for years. I had to hold it till the film was over, and let it out somewhere, all alone.”

Vishal admitted that ‘10-12% cinematic liberty’ has been taken in Shershaah but the family is ‘okay with it’. He continued, “Sidharth always said that he feels a tremendous sense of responsibility playing Vikram. He wanted to live up to our expectations, and he did.”

Also read: Shershaah review: Sidharth Malhotra plays Vikram Batra with saintly sincerity in Amazon’s simplistic war drama

Shershaah is one of two war films that is being released ahead of the Independence Day weekend. The other is Bhuj: The Pride of India, starring Ajay Devgn, Sanjay Dutt, Sonakshi Sinha and others. Bhuj will be released on Disney+ Hotstar on Friday.