Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw was, by most accounts, the most quotable person who has ever served in the Indian Army. He was also, by most accounts, the finest military officer India has produced — the architect of the 1971 war that created Bangladesh, a man who refused political pressure to act before his army was ready and was proven comprehensively right. Meghna Gulzar's film is a portrait of that man and that career, and it has the great good fortune of Vicky Kaushal to carry it.
Kaushal disappears into the role in the way that actors rarely do in Indian biographical films. He has the bearing, the wit — Manekshaw's wit was legendary, and the film deploys it generously — and the physical authority that the role demands. The period detail is impeccable. Gulzar is a disciplined filmmaker, and her discipline shows in every frame.
The film's weakness, if it has one, is structural rather than cinematic. A life this long and this event-packed resists compression, and Sam Bahadur occasionally feels like a highlight reel — moving rapidly from one historical moment to the next without always giving each one the room it deserves. The 1971 war sequences are superb. The earlier sections are somewhat dutiful.
Sanya Malhotra, as Silloo Manekshaw, is given less than she deserves. That is a criticism of the screenplay, not the performance.
A film that honours its subject. Kaushal makes certain of that.