Fire By Dawn

The film opens to a black screen. As the opening credits fade in and out, we hear a cacophony of radio transmissions between a platoon of soldiers under fire. Ambushed and overwhelmed, the soldiers are in complete chaos and one by one they stop replying to the comms, presumably because they are dead or captured. By the end of this 20-second intro we hear the voice of just one soldier asking for back-up.

We see two soldiers running side by side in a panicked retreat. We hear gunfire and explosions close behind them, their ragged breath, and their heavy boots tearing through the jungle floor.

They come to a stop next to a clearing in the jungle, not wanting to expose themselves to aerial view. We finally get a look at our two protagonists.

Gagan is lean, intelligent, and an agile fighter but is prone to over-thinking during tense situations which isn’t helped by his neurotic disposition. Biju is a stoic killing machine, with a dead-pan consistency that is matched only by his morbid sense of humour.

Gagan’s hands and face are smeared with mud and blood. Gagan looks up from his walkie-talkie and looks at his comrade, Biju, as they realise that they’re probably the only survivors of the attack. He gets down on his knees in exhaustion but Biju steps forward and lifts Gagan to his feet, “Get up. We need a plan to get out of here and you must be smarter than me, you’re wearing spectacles in a gun fight.”

Gagan, not sure whether to be offended or not, looks around to assess their location. They can’t go back the way they came, and they can’t afford to stay put and hope to be rescued. They must move forward, through the open ground, with nowhere to hide.

Biju spots a signboard in the distance and decides to check it out in case it tells them where the nearest village might be. Gagan advises against going out into the open and stays behind to provide cover. Behind them, the sound of gunfire grows distant, appearing in sporadic bursts followed by unintelligible war cries that echo in the thick jungle.

As Biju slowly walks towards the small signboard, he hears a ‘click’ beneath his feet and freezes. Gagan asks over the radio, “What’s it say?” Biju smirks and replies, “I can’t read it clearly from here but I’m pretty sure it says, ‘Caution: Landmines’… They should make the sign a bit bigger, no?”

Biju laughs at his predicament and lights a cigarette before telling Gagan to go on ahead without him. Gagan, however, carefully retraces Biju’s footsteps and gets flat on his belly to start deactivating the landmine.

He digs around Biju’s foot with a knife and figures out what kind of landmine they’re dealing with. Then he must reach underneath it to pull out it’s booster explosive plugs. While Gagan’s doing this Biju notices a specific buzzing sound and spots a surveillance drone coming towards them. Without a word he aims his gun at it and shoots it down, which enrages Gagan who nearly makes a fatal mistake: “If this thing goes off, you’ll lose a leg, but I’ll be the one who dies!” To which Biju responds nonchalantly, “I never liked war drones… Takes the fun out of everything…”

Arguing & bickering throughout the process, Gagan is close to disarming the landmine. He has to replace the safety pin but can’t find anything to do it with.

Suddenly bullets whizz past them as an enemy soldier open fires on them. Taken by surprise, Gagan & Biju are forced to surrender. They try to warn the soldier about the landmines, but the enemy isn’t listening. He slowly walks towards them, telling them to surrender, until he too takes a wrong step and hears the dreaded, ‘click’. Finally understanding their warnings, the soldier looks at the sign in the distance and laments, “They should make that sign bigger, like… Much bigger…”

Biju chimes in, “That’s what I was saying.”

The soldier forces Gagan to disarm the landmine, who asks, “What makes you think I can do that?” The soldier replies matter-of-factly, “Of course you can, who else wears spectacles to a gunfight?”

Gagan begrudgingly starts moving towards him, poking the ground with his knife to check for any more landmines. The soldier gets a radio transmission asking about his whereabouts, “Come in Jotish, madarchod you still alive or can I keep your phone charger?” and he reassures his captain that he’s on his way back with two prisoners. After the transmission Jotish promises Gagan & Biju that they’ll be treated humanely as prisoners, and they’ll also get to watch ‘Big Boss’ because the captain is a big Salman Khan fan.

Biju & Jotish start arguing over Big Boss contestants while Gagan starts digging around Jotish’s foot to find the landmine, but instead he finds an old crumpled up can of Coca Cola. Jotish starts celebrating when Gagan & Biju receive a transmission on their comms from HQ, instructing them to clear the area as a tactical air strike is on its way: “Get outta there kids, we’ll be shitting fire by dawn. Over.”

With Biju facing the other way, Gagan on the ground & Jotish with a clear advantage the three of them have a Mexican stand-off. Tension rises as nobody speaks, everyone assessing their weapons and the enemy’s. After a swift burst of movement, it’s Biju, the expert marksman, who shoots Jotish dead, the sound of the gun shot echoing in the open space.

Gagan searches his body and finds a ballpoint pen. He removes the refill and walks back to Biju where he uses it to replace the safety pin. Biju helps Gagan to his feet, and they both look at Jotish. Gagan asks, almost rhetorically, “Should we have done that?” Biju doesn’t reply, he’s already on his knees with his knife out and is moving ahead while being careful of further landmines.

Gagan postpones his existential dilemma and helps Biju clear a path through the minefield. The last we see of Gagan & Biju is the two of them arguing & bickering, faced by a huge stretch of open land in front of them, and behind them, a war-torn jungle billowing with smoke.

END.