Raajneeti - Movie Review

After a long time I got drawn to theater for a Hindi movie, Raajneeti. Most convincing reason being a directorial from ace Prakash Jha and also the buzz created around. To put in a nutshell the experience of the movie is not so impressive! With the prior experience of his creations I had huge expectation of something new. But to my disappointment, it was nothing but a cocktail of “Mahabharat”, “Godfather” and history of Gandhi family in Indian politics. So every move in the movie was predictable in nature and thus not much of surprise. And because “Sarkar” was very much influenced by Godfather, one can find lot of imposition from the same movie. I guess I had also built up an expectation of on-screen duel between two titans – Nana Patekar and Nasiruddin Shah. Unfortunately they did not share the screen together even for a minute!
Any improvisation of THE cult movie, if well made, forces you to remember those immortal characters. Thus Micheal, Sonny keeps rotating in your mind as you keep watching their on-screen version in this movie on Ranvir Kapur and Arjun Rampal.

Then is the buzz around about the movie all a fuss? Certainly not. First and foremost, it's a very neatly made movie and for that kudos to Mr. Jha. Secondly, almost everybody in the movie acted their level best. Ajay Devgan, Manoj Bajpai, Nana Patekar are established and have delivered per expectation. Arjun Rampal seemed to have shown his good acting skills as the role demanded, but nothing exceptional. Ranvir also kept a good impression as a serious actor and it seems he is living up to the expectation that he has been building since his debut. As always Katrina was a flawless beauty on screen, but here she acted beyond the expectation one generally has about her acting! So what's wrong when everything went well? It's the story, you get to chew nothing new!

There has been a concern from lot of viewers about the show of violence in the movie. In my opinion, that was integral part of the movie. Last shootout scene in an abandoned factory, and a snippet of a disc song, were the regular masala Bollywood component – which could have been screened better or edited out. Some reviews correlated this movie with Benegal's classic "Kalyug", but it does not have that strong resemblance with Mahabharat or Kayug either – though some components from Mahabharata were picked up – Kunti-Karna and Karna-Duryodhan episodes. Overall, due to neatness of direction and up to the mark acting, I would rate the movie 3 out of 5 and categorize as a slightly better than average!

Some of the strange unanswered loopholes or funny elements of the story -
- How the old CM's right hand, Nana, became an integral part of the major alliance party, it remained a mystery!
- An eminent Left leader on Indian soil has to be a bong – Nasiruddin plays “Bhashkar Sanyal”!
- In a scene where Manoj plays drunk with a dark maroon drink in his hand, the same frame captures a bottle of Appy Fizz on table in backdrop!
- In a scene where Ranvir play chess on his Blackberry and the next scene gives a glimpse of the same game being projected on their party office projector screen! Playing chess on projector from blackberry - huh?
- The old politician Babulaal was shown as gay unnecessarily – poor Babulaal!
- During this whole election episode Ranvir-Nana did not approach Ranvir's Grandpa, ex-CM at all or did not show their political stand about him.
- Two baseball bats being available in a farm house of Indian country side is beyond expectation!

Last but not the least, if you have not seen the all time classic, Godfather, you may like this movie, otherwise you are bound to be haunted by lot of familiar scenes from your memory! Coppola jai ho … no one can you remake your creation better, adaptations are good, but you are the best!
I would really look forward for a true follow-up of Gangajaal and Apaharan from Mr. Jha in future ...

- Surojit Pathak