Raajneeti

Mahabharat returns in Prakash Jha's 'Raajneeti'. This one is a Masterstroke! Jha makes a film about politics, it's players and it's history.

What works the most for 'Raajneeti' is it's inspiration. Jha and Anjum Rajabali's screenplay is water-tight, the first hour, especially, is fantastic. It's a winner, because it's a drama that creates an impact of it's own. Jha's direction is superb, and performances are award-worthy. Despite, a running time of over 2 Hours and 30 Minutes, this film is a must watch!

Jha and Rajabali's screenplay is water-tight, Jha's direction is superb. The Performances: Manoj Bajpayee is fantastic. He is sure to take away all the awards in the Supporting Actor category next year. Nana Patekar is, as always, flawless. Ranbir Kapoor is wonderfully restrained. Ajay is good, but he deserved more scope. Arjun Rampal is superb. Naseeruddin Shah in a cameo, is effective. Katrina speaks Hindi, and does a fair job. Nikhila Trikha is excellent. Shruti Seth is good. Others are perfect. The Camera-Work is killer.

'Raajneeti' is not to be missed. 2010 brings it's first power-packed venture! Two Thumbs Up!

First of all let me clear it out, I personally hate politics and am a novice in it but after watching this movie I concluded few things:

1) All politicians are murderers.

2) People switch their present or future life partners with others in order to gain votes or money to gain votes.

3) Police is just like dice for politicians. They throw and spin them against each other for their own benefits.

4) There is no term like family or sibling in politics. Anyone can turn against anyone or may be kill each other just for greed of votes.

5) Public is a complete moron; people vote for that person who gives them a cunning speech and not to that person who genuinely wants good for them.

6) There are no human beings in politics, just a bunch of 'escaped-from-hell' devils fighting against each other to attain powers not for using for benefit of public but for personal greediness.

I am not sure whether the things I concluded are correct but you will sense trueness in them once you watch this movie. Prakash Jha( Mrityudand, GangaJal and Apaharan), famous for making movies on serious topics and getting success for every film, fails this time. All his previous movies worked because he stuck to the main story till the end and the lead actor did justice with his role. But, in Raajneeti he did a different thing, he assembled a huge star cast with every actor having a potential of pulling of any movie well and a strong topic: politics, which was great but he didn't give preference to MAIN story this time which went wrong.

Raajneeti is supposedly based on the epic Mahabharata in which brothers went for a long brutal war against each other because of their personal differences. Thus, with so many characters in the movie it was impossible for any director to present two stories simultaneously: Politics and a family war. Prakash Jha had so much scope of showing the inside story of the dirty politics going on in the country, people would have been satisfied with that but we all know there very few politicians who come from the same family or may be there is no one. So, instead of showing the movie on politics Prakash Jha ended up making a movie in which a group of brothers play conspiracies against each other to become the group leader.

I am not indicating that Raajneeti was a complete failure. It made huge impacts many times. The positives were fine performances by the actors. Ranbir Kapoor, Manoj Bajpai, Katrina Kaif and Arjun Rampal deserve special accolades for their performances. Naseeruddin Shah had nothing to do in the movie. Ajay Devgn too had little scope in comparison to others but he did his job well. Nana Patekar was OK. Sarah Thomson was good.

As I told storyline would have been much better if Prakash Jha and Anjum Rajabali stuck only to the politics. Music by Wayne Sharpe went unnoticed except for the song Mora Piya which was played a few times in the background. Editing was poor, the movie could easily have been cut short by thirty minutes which didn't happen the movie so gave the audiences many chances of yawning and checking their watches.

To conclude I would say the difference lies in Prakash Jha's earlier successful movies and Raajneeti is that the previous movies were made with an intention of presenting the audiences with reality and Raajneeti was only made with intention of scoring big at the box office. The film had so many brilliant actors that Prakash Jha didn't do full justice with everyone, he wanted to include everything in his movie: romance, suspense, and some scenes which were completely unexpected and unwanted.

I know you will watch this film, so there is no point of saying anything on this but yeah this film has its moments which will remind you of old Prakash Jha. That's why I say he didn't go for politics, he went for polymorphism!

My Rating: 6/10

Thanks & Regards

Even if you do not know before going into the movie, it is evident in the first few minutes that the film draws heavily from the epic of Mahabharata. From the basic plot to the characters. Your palms will get sweaty a few times if you can relate to it.

Ranbir Kapoor is our modern day Arjun & Krishna woven into one. All characters in the movie have shades of gray and Ranbir is no exception. He is a strategist who is not afraid to go the bloody mile. Being a young actor in a multi starer can be tricky, but Ranbir does emerge on top, thereby setting the pace for more serious & deeper roles in the future. Nana Patekar is so subtle & understated that he takes the film forward effortlessly. No yelling, just shrewd smiles. Ajay Devgn proves yet again that he is past the stage where he needs screen time to justify his role. He easily enters into the skin of the modern day Karna, letting Manoj Bajpai as Duryodhan take center stage. And Bajpai, justifies every minute of his presence on screen. Arjun Rampal has his moments in the sun. Katrina impresses mainly through her improved Hindi. This is definitely not the role that she was hoping would get her a national award.

Subtlety is not a mark of Prakash Jha's cinema. From Gangajal to Apaharan to Raajneeti, all are in your face dramas. Raajneeti, if I may say, would be his most commercial outing in some time. We have very mainstream actors, a grand scale in the sheer number of crowds, bloody violence, cars going up in flames & people killing each other left, right & center.

Even for its 3 hour run time, some scenes & sequences do seem rushed in a bit. Nasserudin Shah has as much a presence in the film as he has on the posters. He is not in the film if you are five minutes late to the movie. All our political men are ultra virile & the females- ultra fertile. There is also a needless club song. Then, there are car bombs & a climactic gun battle that is a bit over the top just like all Prakash Jha films. It could have been kept tighter & more believable.

But that said, the film is a gripping tale with very intensely executed pieces and careful attention to detail. The basic premise remains that of the Mahabharata, but the film is not limited to that. It is fast paced and there is seldom a loose moment. It is not Jha's best work, not even close. But I am tempted to rate it highly for the power packed performances & the gripping screenplay.

I say 3.5 on 5

To say that the film has influence from Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather is not without merit. After all, it has references such as the bloody bed scene (without involving a horse head), deaths of similar characters, and of course, the story of the rise of the youngest, most promising child of the household, here played by Ranbir Kapoor, into the bitter orchestrator of his political party's campaign for the Chief Ministership, complete with an overpowering vendetta of revenge and honour. Ranbir's Samar Pratap role is perhaps the juiciest of the lot here, given his transformation into someone cold and calculated, who will not hesitate to give up his emotions in order to manipulate others into doing his bidding, all moves played out like a chess game in order to advance his cause.

And the other persona in the film given a transformation at that level, is Katrina Kaif's Indu, an impetuous girl deeply in love with Samar, who also has to give up feelings more as a matter of instruction by her industrialist father, who sees donations to political campaigns and marriages as a sealing of alliances for favours and benefits, highlighting the clout that campaign donators wield over the politicians they support. Katrina's role is something you'll notice right away, as she disappears into a mature woman taking on seasoned politicians riding on her wave of sympathy, and in a way resembles through her demeanour, very much like Sonia Gandhi. A pity though that this interesting turn only takes place in the last act, having to disappear very much in the middle of the film.

Which is probably why it was reported that one of the stars felt disappointed with the film being billed as a Kapoor-Kaif starrer, with posters having these the two characters taking centerstage. But who can blame the marketers, as they had starred in the highly successful and popular Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani in 2009, and most certainly the filmmakers will want to tap on that same crowd to come into and experience a thematically heavier film. What more, these are the two characters that experience change, much unlike the others who play seasoned politicians who are entrenched into the way they work and operate, leaving room for schemes to enter through the blind side, in a game of threats and counterthreats that you can easily see looming, to gain the upper hand leading to ballots being cast.

Prakash Jha crafts a web of character relationships that you'll need to mind-map as the film moves along, introducing key characters and influencers in this family dynasty politics, where the early generation of alliance between brothers, break out into a power struggle for party leadership amongst the next generation between cousins. It's very much dirty business, and Jha, a one time politician, provides plenty for the audience as he goes into sub plots and elements involving corruption across ranks, the ineptness of the police force, tactics in getting mass support, and how through the greasing of the right palms, one gets ballots by the village-load. And if all else fails, there's always the nod toward the enforcer type to flex some muscles, and political assassinations too fall into fair play. It's an extremely dirty business, and it's somehow a sneak peek into how Indian politics get played.

The ensemble cast shouldn't be overlooked as well, with Arjun Rampal's Prithviraj the hot- headed brother of Samar who on one hand is being propelled to lead his breakaway party and yet having a character that's less than noble, and Manoj Bajpai is excellent as Veerendra Pratap who's constantly finding himself not in the driver's seat of events, and have to rely on heavy muscle to keep the competition away. The villains here seem more sympathetic as they cannot find viable solutions to their predicament, and have to boil everything down to violence. Nana Patekar's Brij Gopal also shined as the unfailing mentor who has experience to count on in his repertoire of tricks up his sleeve, and has a key role to play in the falling out of the established dynasty.

I suppose a film like this cannot possibly be made here until our state of industry and politics mature to a stage where filmmakers can tell a story without the innate fear of harassment, though Jha did get requests by the censors to tone down some scenes and change some dialogues, which was complied with. The film turned out as an average epic much to my disappointment as I expected a lot, but it did have moments which stood out from the usual cookie cutter. It's not great, but it did enough to share a glimpse into the shady world of politics and the less than angelic politicians who struggle with each other for the vote of the populace.

The Hindi cinema over the years has produced a plethora of timeless gems, which not only entertained the masses, but also awed the critics with their originality, poignance, austerity and occasional grandeur. Today, the Hindi cinema has become a mere impression of what it used to be in its decorated days.

Rajneeti is a mere continuation of the long chain of over hyped run-of-the- mill movies, which lack both originality and substance. The ever meticulous and uncanny Prakash Jha fails to leave any mark on the movie, which is a mere mishmash of weak dialogues, trite sub-slots, incongruities, and incompetency in editing and to some extent in direction. Jha fallibly blends the epic tale of the Mahabharata with that of the Godfather in Rajneeti. Jha missed yet another trick by failing to acknowledge and avow to the fact that Rajneeti was meant to be an adaptation of the Mahabharata.

The stellar cast of the movie somehow manages to give it a much needed impetus. The acting is commendable with a special mention of Manoj Vajpayee, Nana Patekar and Arjun Rampal. The cinematography, sound editing & mixing are also up to the mark. The movie, though marred by the aforementioned inconsistencies is definitely worth a watch if the viewer overlooks the banalities of the plot and its conspicuous similarities to the Mahabharata and the Godfather trilogy.

PS: Rajneeti can definitely serve to be a guilty pleasure to the less eclectic viewers and for those whose sole purpose is entertainment. 6.5/10

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