Wednesday, May 23, 2012 11:25 AM IST
Raajneeti
Last Updated : 10 Jun 2010 03:05:19 PM IST
A still from 'Raajneeti'
'Raajneeti' (Hindi, 2010)Director: Prakash JhaStarring: Ajay Devgn, Nana Patekar, Ranbir Kapoor, Arjun Rampal, Katrina Kaif, Manoj Bajpai and Naseeruddin ShahShashi Tharoor had the guts and the vision to take the drama-filled world of Indian politics and crash it into the Mahabharata to bring forth a vividly evocative book in the The Great Indian Novel. Prakash Jha's 'Raajneeti' attempts the same. But Tharoor's book did not contain paragraphs lifted verbatim from 'The Godfather' or from the editorial pages of a newspaper. And that's the thin line on either side of which the two men sit.As if the combined worlds of the Mahabharata and Indian politics were not a vast enough canvas, adding The Godfather to it, bringing the rush push of images from television news channels makes this as classy a cocktail as you are likely to find at a bad bucket party. There is complete silence in the cinema hall every time one of the characters launches into rhetoric about what politics is. Almost every character in the film is given an opportunity to do this, and some do so more than once. Just get on with the story telling, you think.In trying to paint a picture of political intrigue, Prakash Jha instead finds himself stranded in the middle of a mere gang war, albeit with flags and police protection. And the overwhelming influence of that legendary film, 'The Godfather', is writ large across the screen. Creativity is not something the director lacks. But he makes it a point not to show it.Anybody who has read a newspaper even sporadically or turned to a news channel by mistake would see through the gang war. There may be instances of netas involved in murders and other such shady things. But to make these the obsession of their minute-to-minute existence is taking it too far.You know the moment there is a political party and there are brothers, that something is going to happen which is going to cause one brother to break away and form his own outfit, setting the stage for a head on collision between brother and brother. And Prakash Jha falters here, failing completely to add any real twist.And all those things that were said in the pre-release hype of the movie are true, which in itself is a problem. There is a Sonia Gandhi-like character, with a Sikh man in her husband's band of men. The parallels are unmistakable because the director wants you to see them. He wants you to see them, so you talk about them and forget everything else that was missing in the movie.In good supply, though, are shootouts, assassinations and retribution, which the characters trade back and forth like a ping pong match between a Chinese and a North Korean. They happen so often and revenge motives pile so high that this begins to take a heavy toll on the story.The flow of events is blotchy and the director has to appear on screen for a few seconds to remind us that he is still a part of all this. It is a pity Prakash Jha has to offer such tasteless fare after delivering films like 'Apaharan' and 'Gangajal'.But to give him some credit, the director has set his film only in the culture he knows best. Set geographically in Madhya Pradesh, the film's political culture is from all over the Hindi belt, liberally borrowing from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and the likes.And the ensemble cast could arguably prove a draw in the initial stages of the movies, with some of the stars breaking stereotype. Katrina Kaif, for instance, has a scene in a discotheque, but does not launch into the song and dance sequences she is so used to.Ranbir Kapoor, on the other hand, could be coming into his own as an actor. He plays the movie's Michael Corleone-like character with ease. Ajay Devgn, a Prakash Jha favourite, shows maturity as an actor. But the director should wake up to the fact that Devgan cannot play 30 year olds forever.Arjun Rampal delivers sufficiently and Nana Patekar is at his reliable best. But there is one man in 'Raajneeti' who stands head and shoulders above the rest. Manoj Bajpai outshines all the other performers by two suns in his role as the uncharismatic political heir who unleashes hellish minions to hold onto power he believes is his.At the end of it, 'Raajneeti' is but a compilation of familiar things which is a mishmash mess at best. In compiling familiar films, familiar characters, familiar punch lines and familiar murders, the director ought to have remembered that old English adage: familiarity breeds contempt.
Topics:
Copyright © 2009 Expressbuzz. All rights reserved.