Two film academy students, Ali (Vatsal Sheth) and Sameer (Sohail Khan), must make a movie in order to graduate. They choose to create a documentary illustrating reasons not to join the Indian Armed Forces and go on a motorcycle road trip bearing three letters they have been given to deliver — each from a slain soldier to his family.
On their first stop, in Atari, Amritsar, they meet the widow, Kuljeet Kaur (Preity Zinta), and the son, Jasswinder Singh [Jassi] (Dwij Yadav), of a Sikh soldier, Havaldar (Sergeant) Balkar Singh of 8 Sikh Regiment (Salman Khan), who was killed in action three years earlier. The students find that the entire village is very proud of the heroic officer and his sacrifice for the country. When they are flying kites, their kite is cut, and it falls beyond a certain fence in another field. Jassi tells them that the area beyond the fence is Pakistan, and the fence is the border.
The students' second stop, Himachal, finds them meeting now wheelchair-using Air Force pilot Sqn Leader Vikram Shergill (Sunny Deol), whose Army officer brother, Captain Dhananjay Shergill (Bobby Deol), of 18 Grenadiers, had also been killed in action. Vikram is very proud of his brother's sacrifice. and he shows them how he has come to terms with his own grief.
The third letter is to be delivered to a Mr. and Mrs. Naqvi (played by Mithun Chakraborty and Prateeksha Lonkar), but their bike runs out of petrol, and they hitch a ride on a military convoy heading to a nearby base. They see soldiers' coffins in the truck, and the driver quotes an inspiring poem. At the base, they talk to the regiment commander and find another letter by Lt. Sahil Naqvi of Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry (Dino Morea), which they request to deliver themselves. They see that Mrs. Naqvi is busy at a tea party, hardly paying any attention. Sameer accuses her of not loving her son and says that Sahil is a coward. Mrs. Naqvi plays them a tape which Sahil had recorded after he had saved another soldier's life. She tells him that she and her husband have been affected, and the parties serve as a distraction for them. They leave, but return the next day and slowly bring the couple's life back to normal.
After completing their film, they reveal in a voiceover that although they graduated, they did not go to America (as they had initially planned) because the trip changed their outlook. They try to join the Army but fail, then start a school to share their experiences. Some years later, Sameer and Ali are walking around their school campus. A man in an olive green uniform (Salman Khan) approaches them. This is revealed to be Jassi, the son of the first martyred army officer. Now a strapping young man, he has joined the army like his father and will soon graduate from the IMA. The movie ends with the statement, "You don't have to be a soldier to love your country."
Originally titled Mera Bharat Mahaan (My India is Great), the film was rechristened Heroes, to avoid sounding jingoistic.[3]
Filming began on 15 June 2007. Salman and Preity are paired opposite each other, in their fifth film together.[4] Shooting took place in Ladakh,[5]Chandigarh, Punjab and Delhi.[6] Some scenes were shot in Pangong Tso featuring Salman Khan, Sohail Khan and Vatsal Sheth.[7]
Heroes received generally positive reviews from critics. Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama gave the movie 3.5 stars out of 5.[8]
According to The Indian Express the film does manage to say what it set out to; that pride keeps the families of the deceased soldiers going, civilians sleep peacefully only because soldiers give up their lives, and that a country survives only because it has brave soldiers guarding its borders. But it argues the director is too simplistic and that wringing emotion out of so many situations causes even the supreme sacrifice that the soldiers make turn trite.[9]India Times movies give the movie 3 out of 5.[10]
