MUMBAI: After delivering a critically acclaimed performance in ‘Baby’, anticipation is already building for actor Akshay Kumar’s much awaited edge-of-the-seat thriller ‘Airlift’.

Known for getting into the skin of a character, Akshay has been busy taking diction classes to learn Arabic, so that he can meticulously perfect the dialect and other nuances in order to play the role of Indian-Arab billionaire ‘Ranjit Katiyal’, who plans an ambitious evacuation mission to rescue 170,000 Indians in Kuwait during the Iraq invasion.

Akshay plays the role of a UAE resident; the actor will also be required to speak the languages for certain sequences in the film and hence in order to deliver the lines appropriately, the actor has been undergoing a training session in the language for the past three weeks.

Airlift is directed by Raja Krishna Menon and produced by Bhushan Kumar along with Nikhil Advani and Vikram Mehrotra. Akshay’s leading lady in the film will be Nimrat Kaur (Lunchbox). The film is slated to release around the Indian Republic Day on Jan. 22, 2016.