Monday, July 25, 2011

Saturday Popcorn - Rajneeti

An uneventful Saturday afternoon was spent watching 'Rajneeti'. My friend had been insisting me to watch this for a long time and i finally made time to spend an afternoon, and his reviews bordered upon 'why wasn't this considered for Oscars?' :-) The movie turned out to be another story taken out of our old epic with a star cast. During the movie's first one hour I was really happy that there was NO demarcation between 'The Good' and 'The Evil', everyone was interested in their own welfare and went to any means to get that accomplished. But towards the second hour of the movie, the director again gave us the 'Which is more evil?' kinda crap and the story was hijacked by the necessity to have a Hero/villain routine. Many loose ends and logical flaws, but the worst crime of all was to waste great actors in small roles or roles without screen space.

I am not going to go over the story and dissect each and every sequence but i was clearly disappointed at the handling of Manoj Bajpai, Naseeruddin Shah and Nana Patekar. Naseeruddin Shah for a single scene? Huge thumbs down for his portrayal, I was expecting Shah to make an entry late in the movie to provide twist so that it doesn't become a clear rip off from the epic. But bad guess i suppose! Manoj Bajpai was cast like a stereotype villain and his character was not developed properly to convince us as the 'Bad Guy'. I was rooting for Bajpai to create a surprise element in the movie climax, but No sir, he died the 'villain' way. Nana Patekar, the good guy? Oh comon, we know Patekar is great when he portrays characters with dark shades, i was clearly disappointed when he wasn't one of the scheming minds, but a silent spectator who acknowledges a good strike on the enemy. Why provide so much importance to Katrina and Ranbir when you have actors of Bajpai and Patekar at your disposal?

Taking cue from an epic for your story is never a bad idea, but this movie had so much potential with such an amazing star cast and still the director went down the beaten track. I liked the portion when the hero/villain routine was cast aside during the start and had he gone ahead with the same intensity and provided a enthralling story line without justifying each others actions, it would have been an amazing story and screen play. Yet another story where i expected more but ended up disappointed.

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