Major Ranvir Kaul (Amitabh Bachchan) and many of his men are captured by the Pakistani Army during the 1971 war and kept in various Pakistani prisons. They are treated badly, human rights are violated and the Indian army and the government have also forgotten about them.

Ranvir's wife (Tanuja) and her son Gaurav (Akshaye Khanna) are also waiting. When the Indian army does not agree to help them out, Gaurav sets off on a mission to rescue his father. He reaches Pakistan and stays at the house of a Pakistani Hindu Jabbar (Akhilendra Mishra) and falls in love with his pretty daughter Radhika (Amrita Rao). Jabbar helps him to a certain extent. In the meantime Ranvir Kaul and his men are transferred to another jail as the human rights activists try and locate for atrocities committed on the Indian POWS.

There they meet the evil jailor (Kay Kay) and another Indian army man Jatin Kumar (Raj Zutshi). Together they plot an escape… but are caught and a few men are killed. Although the Pakistani army try and kill another anti-social inmate Khan (Sanjay Dutt), he escapes after being saved by Gaurav. Khan and Gaurav unite and make a plan. They steal a blueprint of the prison and strategize the flight. Khan gets arrested, reenters the prison and discusses plans of escape. Suddenly they realise that the one that they think is Jatin Kumar is not an Indian army man but a Pakistani soldier in disguise. They pre-pone the plan and escape a day before.

Amitabh Bachchan gets the broken in body but not in spirit look just right. In close tight ups he is suitably vulnerable. Sanjay Dutt is charmingly irreverent about everything. Though he acts with enthusiasm his role offers him little scope. Akshaye Khanna tackles his role like he was doing a school play, grimacing for the last row. Amrita Rao, solely to provide glamour quotient fails as no amount of breast heaving and butt swaying can ever make her sexy. Later, in fact, demurely covered up in salwar kameez, she is far more effective. Tanuja is wasted and K K Menon gets the staring right but the body language wrong.

The film is stylishly shot, has a grand look despite it being a prison film and care has been taken to make the goings-on seem as pragmatic as possible.

Writers Sridhar Raghavan, Gaurang Doshi and Milan Luthria deserve a pat for attempting a novel theme and packaging it well, but how one wishes the narrative had a concise format.

On the whole, an entertaining project Deewar does not disappoint at all.