John Abraham fights a war with real bullets

Knowing pretty well that it won't be
possible to fight a war with a truly 'real'
feel in India, John Abraham headed to
Thailand and Malaysia in order to can
some crucial war scenes for his Madras
Cafe.

"Both John and director Shoojit Sircar
were clear from Day One that everything
about Madras Cafe had to be as authentic
as it can be while maintaining cinematic
appeal. Though there have been quite a
few war movies made in India before, John wanted to take the genre to the
next level. All this while there have been
several claims being made around the
film reaching out for Hollywood
standards. One step in this direction was
to shoot with real bullets so as to make the action sequences truly
real," informs a
source.

It was a given that this wouldn't have
been possible in India. Hence it was
pronto decided that Thailand and
Malaysia would be the chosen countries
for canning this 'filmy war'.

"Of course we had to take care that no
untowardly incident happened," the
source adds, "Needless to say, when you
are shooting a war scene at such a large
scale, there are many people involved.
More than 1000 rounds were required to be fired and hence the entire area had to
be cordoned off lest anyone comes in the
firing range. Every bullet was accounted
for and all safety precautions were taken
to make sure that no one was hurt."

Considering the fact that John Abraham
himself had a close shave with death a
few months back during the shooting of
Shootout At Wadala when a blank bullet
fired by Anil Kapoor from a close range
barely missed him, he too was cautious and extra precautions were taken.

Confirms John, "Yes, we did use real
bullets for these war scenes. See, when
you shoot with a blank bullet then you can
make out that it is blank. It may not be as
apparent to a regular viewer but then we
wanted authenticity in every frame. We got the necessary permissions in Thailand
and Malaysia to shoot there. As a matter
of fact, in number of scenes we even have
ex-soldiers fighting it out. We came as
close to reality as a war can be."