Rajneeti (2010)

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that Bollywood fans have been craving for good cinema since quite a while and Prakash Jha’s Rajneeti seems to quench their thirst well. There is no doubt that the movie lacks Bollywood masala, glamorous clothes, dances numbers and romance, which Indian cinema thrives on but there’s something in this film which sets it apart from the rest!

Rajneeti is a complicated story about politics, democracy and elections in India. It’s a story that shows how some people have control on the lives and destinies of millions. It’s a story about how political ambitions make a person extremely bitter and violent. It’s a story about how the young generation becomes wildly involved in politics after the death of the family’s head. It’s a story about how an ultimate outsider to politics, Samar Pratap (Ranbir Kapoor) comes from abroad for his uncle’s birthday and gets involved into the battle-ravaged ground of family rivalry and becomes the mastermind behind the entire political warfare. It’s a story about how his life changes from a peaceful one to one that contains a lot of aggression! It’s a story of the woman who loves him and lost him and the one he loved and lost! It’s a story of a simple man’s fall into the moral hell, politics. To cut it short, it’s a story of the ugly side of Indian democracy, politics and beyond.

Rajneeti is a great attempt by Prakash Jha to shed light on the many social problems that prevail in the Indian society and he tries his best to expose them through this film. It also shows how politics is driven by corruption, greed and most of all revenge. Nothing more can be said about the plot because that would confuse you even further.

Ranbir Kapoor can easily be called the lead of Rajneeti even though there are many other actors with equally important roles. I never doubted Ranbir’s potential but this role was just performed to excellence. The way he has acted his role with such intensity shows that these young actors are not just eye candy and they can actually do serious parts. His acting in Rajneeti could easily give the best actors of Bollywood a run for their money. Throughout the film, his emotions were intense, his dialogues strong, his actions just perfect and can I also please add his looks were absolutely killing?

Surprisingly, Katrina too fit in the role perfectly, even though I never thought she would be able to do justice to such a serious performance. Considering Rajneeti is her first mature role, she has done a great job and the way she portrays her emotions leaves you in tears and shows that she has matured as an actress. Arjun Rampal has also shown great acting skills and portrayed the role of a violent politician perfectly while Ajay Devgan is just another actor in the film and it’s clearly not even near one of his best performances. The supporting cast has done an excellent job too.

The songs were beautiful especially ‘More Piya’, ‘Bheegi Si’ and ‘Ishq Barse’ and anyone can get addicted to them easily. Direction was beautifully done, the script was very well written and the dialogues were extremely strong, which breathed life into different roles. Coming to the technical side of Rajneeti, the camera work was brilliant, the art direction was superb and the background score was just ideal.

However, Rajneeti does come with a few flaws. To begin with, it takes a bit too much time to settle down the plot and narration and you need to watch it with a lot of concentration otherwise it will only make your head spin! 40 minutes into the movie and all that has been shown is politics. Those who want to see Ranbir and Katrina spark on the screen will be extremely disappointed as there are hardly five scenes of them together. I also believe that there were a few (read: very few) parts where the movie seemed stretched and a little more editing would have made it is flawless but this does not mean that one could get bored during the movie!

All in all, it’s one of those movies that make you enjoy every part of the film and the popcorn as your eye balls pop out at literally every scene and at times you even jump in your chair out of shock with what just happened. It makes you feel the money and time was well spent as you walk out of the cinema.

Whether Rajneeti makes millions on the box office or not is still a question considering a hefty budget of 20.91 million was spent on it and recovering such huge amounts is not that easy, but it’s one movie you shouldn’t miss this summer. It shows how Indian cinema is much more than sugar coated stories and happy endings – Hafsah Sarfraz

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2010, Genre – Drama/Action, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Prakash Jha, Director – Prakash Jha, Music Director – Wayne Sharpe, Pritam Chakraborty, Aadesh Shrivastava, Shantanu Moitra, Cast - Ajay Devgn, Nana Patekar, Ranbir Kapoor, Naseeruddin Shah, Arjun Rampal, Katrina Kaif, Manoj Bajpai, Sarah Thompson, Darshan Jariwala, Shruti Seth, Nikhila Tirkha, Chetan Pandit, Vinay Apte, Kiran Karmarkar, Daya Shankar Pandey, Jahangir Khan, Ravi Khemu

What's Your Raashee?

What’s Your Raashee? is Ashutosh Gowariker’s sardonic way of asking ‘what’s your patience’ (or ‘how far can your bladder hold’ as an Indian critic has unabashedly pointed out). The Lagaan director (and hardcore Swadesi) had seriously lost his marbles as he ran out of patience and dignity during an awards show when he derided Priyanka Chopra’s Best Actress win for Fashion saying Aishwariya Rai should have won for Jodhaa-Akbar. Gowariker has directed the Mughal magnum opus and so his very public outburst was perceived as him trying to gain favour with the Bachchans. Of course, after all this, Priyanka stars in this venture.

Poor Harman Baweja though, that he got dragged into it. He, as always, looks eerily like a Xerox copy of Hrithik Roshan and playing a cool NRI on a bride hunt doesn’t do much for him. But his silently sizzling chemistry with alleged old flame Priyanka Chopra might make the venture worth it even if it bombs at the box office (which there’s a fair chance of).

A regurgitated Bollywood spin-off of the Gujrati novel Kimball Ravenswood, What’s Your Raashee? revolves around the efforts of Baweja’s family trying to wed him off in 10 days so he can be the grand recipient of his grandfather’s fortune and thereby pay off his elder brother’s debt, so saving them from bankruptcy and the infamous debt collecting thugs. It’s a story line with great potential for inane humour, but that unfortunately is spaced far away in between the scenes. However, to be fair, when it does strike, it really does tickle that funny bone.

Even so, a few moments of glee are not enough to distract one from the reality that the film is, in its most basic form, a trite pointless chick flick. With a plot that moves at a deathly dull pace (enough to make you feel that you may just die in the theatre without any respite) and a series of characters that bore far more than they entertain, What’s Your Raashee? brutally proves that Gowariker really cannot make a commercial film. His is a painful attempt at a sorry version of a romantic comedy. The genre should really be left solely to the David Dhawans and Karan Johars of Bollywood who really know their trade.

The only thing that the film does manage to do however, and do well, is to depict what a versatile and multifaceted actress Priyanka Chopra is. After the smashing hit that Kaminey was, What’s Your Raashee? may be the thing to push Piggy Chops (that’s what they call her in Bollywood) to the top and of course the slimmed down figure helps immensely. Donning an astounding 12 characters, each so completely different from the other (kudos to the costume designer and stylist), and lending them each individuality, depth (well as much as she could manage in the 10 minutes allotted to that character) and emotion, is no easy feat. And even though all 12 characters naturally retain Priyanka’s original (for lack of a better expression) ‘face’ she manages to infuse the distinct attributes and traits of each raashee (zodiac sign) into each character. If you’re confused, as Baweja’s grandfather in the film elucidates, Baweja tries to picture his dream girl in all the women he meets and hence they all look the same.

Apart from being an excellent vehicle for Prianka Chopra’s acting chops, the film becomes far too formulaic; introduce the zodiac sign, depict its strengths through the character, put in a few stereotypes and social taboos, throw in a song, show romantic involvement, move on to the next one. Gowariker really couldn’t steer himself away from his penchant for making issue-based films and tries to force in too many social ills like dowry, the taboo that is pre-marital sex and virginity, underage marriage, ambition and career all onto one single otherwise palette.

At first this structure seems a rather ingenious way to propel the storyline forward, but after witnessing a tirade of Priyankas in different shapes and forms, it gets a bit too tedious, so much so that one begins to cringe in the knowledge that another song is to follow.

The musical score though is fresh, gelling in well with each segment of the film; creating 12 songs, one for each zodiac sign-character is quite ambitious but done well. The film opens with a fantastic fusion of jazz that lends a sensual feel to the film as it goes on to form the background score as well. Nonetheless a repetitive plodding structure and plot render all that effort futile since the overall sense one gets while viewing the end product is of being stuck in a time warp. What’s Your Raashee? is a film that you can only watch once (that too for Priyanka) and at the cost of wasting away a good four hours of your life. You have been warned – Hani Taha Salim (Rating – 2.5 OUT OF 5)

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2009, Genre – Comedy, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Ronnie Screwvala, Sunita Gowariker, Director – Ashutosh Gowariker, Music Director – Sohail Sen, Cast – Priyanka Chopra, Harman Baweja, Anjan Shrivastava, Visswa Badola, Rajesh Vivek, Dilip Joshi, Daya Shankar Pandey, Honey Chhaya, Darshan Jariwala, Manju Singh, Bhairavi Vaidya, Pratik Dixit, Manoj Shah, Dr. Ajit Kulkarni, Geeta Tyagi