Shareek

This movie is a look into rural Punjab where even brothers turn into enemies over land or water issues.. Me being from a village, i can say the situation is exactly like it's depicted in the movie and in some cases much worse. Anyone from Punjab will definitely connect to the movie.

The movie opens up with wide shots of Punjab and the beauty is mesmerizing. The background song tells us about the pride of Punjabis. We see Jimmy Shergill aged to 50 years and must say the makeup guys did an awesome job .

Jassi played Mahi Gill is introduced to us doing traditional Punjabi dance "Gidda" The choreographers did justice to the dance. Her character had so much potential but they failed to properly utilize it in the movie.

The movie raises some relevant issues. It shows that an arrange marriage in Punjab mostly is based on the number of acres of land on owns. This is so true in reality where the first consideration for any marriage is the size of property owned. ...

Though the movies starts pretty good but is filled with many movie clichés. The actress running into our hero and falling in his arms. Love at first sight for the and many many more.

The movie does have a positive message for youngsters of Punjab. It points out that all guys do is waste time to make beautiful girlfriends so they can show off in front of their friends. They waste lot of time and money behind these beautiful girls. One should check this behavior in oneself. Anyone who has lived in Chandigarh will know how much time guys wastes chasing girls. The movie is also is a wakeup call to girls who fall for these type of opportunist guys too quickly thinking it is love. Later getting betrayed & hurt.

Songs of the movie are all great but unfortunately they don't any anything to the movie except the first one. I think its time that movie makers stop adding songs to the movies for no reason. We should be done with clichéd Holli songs, clichéd love making songs which only acts as fillers.

There is this older women character in the movie. This type of women can be found in many households. She is the one who manipulates men in her house to please her own ego. Like this women, Anyone from a Punjabi family will recognize many of the characters depicted in the movie so a thumbs up to the directors but unfortunately they were not used to their full potential.

Though the 1st half was strong. The movie took a downward turn in the 2nd half. The movie lost its way from being a serious movie that brings up an important issue faced by people in Punjab to almost becoming a comedy... The movie had me confused of what to think.. The tension & pacing generated in the first half went cold in second half as nothing much happened...

The movie missed an opportunity. It could have made us questions many of our actions that happen under the influence of false pride. How does pride make brothers enemies which lasts for generations, how does pride allow us to kill our daughters if the fall in love with someone from different caste, how does pride become more important than our own family that we allow it to be destroyed. How can revenge control everything in oneself and life has no value. The movie failed to ask these important questions.

Some part the story is really good and the movie easily competes with big Bollywood movies and in some places it looks like a small budget Punjabi movie. The action in the movie was awful and its filming is even worse. May be a better choice of action directors could have helped since the just look too fake.

There are 2 kinds of people who should watch this movie. First is people who have at some point lived in a village in Punjab. Second is the people who want to know a bit more about the people living in Punjab villages or Punjabi culture. For anyone looking to me moved by a social issue, this movie is not for you. I'd suggest you watch Ramta Jogi.

The movie is just too long with unnecessary scenes, plot points, sub plots & unnecessary characters. They could have easily made the movie at least 30 mins shorter. For example there is Racial Discrimination scene in the movie. Its just shows the movie was trying to do too much. Some scenes have nothing to do with the progress of story and are added for no reason.

A major surprise in the movie was reviled too early and for me that spoiled all the fun. If they had kept it till the end the viewer would have better enjoyed it. In the end the movie just missed a great opportunity to becoming something truly amazing.

One of the best punjabi ever made. They need make more movies like this

Jimmy Shergill makes of this film a masterpiece. His acting game combined to the talent of the director led to a beautiful film with very nice scenes.

Taking you back in time before the 90s (or rather 80s), SHAREEK once again brings forward an ages old feature of PUNJAB and its conventional style of living, wherein the ownership over land and ego issues were (and still are) widely considered as equivalent to some kind of 'social status' much ahead of any level of education, values, affection, love or even blood-relationships. There were a significant number of Punjabi films made around this particular subject in the past decades and it was supposed to be a 'must-have' sub-plot even in the projects dealing with some contrasting genres.

Putting it differently, this family rivalry and a bloody history of ugly events related with the same can easily be considered as an essential feature of life in (mostly rural) Punjab and that is the reason a major chunk of the Punjabi Songs (even in the present times) revolve around the theme of ego wins, guns, clashes, killings, court cases and similar things.

So honestly where the majority of audience (of Punjab) might enjoy SHAREEK taking it as a highly satisfying extension of their own similar outlook towards various issues, I would like to draw a completely different picture of the film with a noble intention of diverting your heated energies to an extremely positive and socially relevant point of view in the text ahead.

Explaining the meaning of its title first, though in Urdu the word means 'participating, sharing' or 'associating', in the film's Punjabi context the word SHAREEK refers to a competitor, rival or enemy to be exact (that might be even cousins). Focusing well on its specific theme of mutual rivalry, the film has a script that strictly follows its core issue right till the end and keeps hitting the target repeatedly resulting in some strong engaging moments at regular intervals. The excellent performances of the lead actors including the ever- reliable Jimmy Sheirgill, the veteran Guggu Gill, the brilliant learner Mukul Dev (coming from a contrasting world of Hindi films), the spirited Kuljinder Singh Sidhu and the beautiful Mahie Gill superbly add to its overall impact on the viewer without any doubt.

But giving the other four aces of the film their much deserving due it's the combined effort of a realistic direction, well-written dialogues, a fast moving script and the impressive portrayals of Jimmy-Kuljinder and Mukul put together that SHAREEK doesn't turn out to be something unimpressive made on the same old formula with all familiar things. Along with that, what further provides a much stronger support to the film is its appreciable cinematography, splendid background score and the emotionally touching slow musical tracks that start playing in the backdrop just at the right moments having some hard hitting lyrics rendered soulfully.

Having said that SHAREEK has an equal number of shortcomings too that doesn't allow it to be rated as any classic product or masterpiece as many might feel. And its major minuses include, a few deliberately added average songs (as usual), the weak presentation of the younger generation by the inexperienced debutants, less attention given to the changes in the physical appearance of characters despite more than a decade passing in its storyline, the repetitive & easily predictable events in its script progression, the weird-illogical sequence of two 'baraats' of cousins heading for the same girl and a highly stretched climax that unnecessarily adds to the film's painfully long length of over 140 minutes. In other words with a better edited product and more (serious) emphasis given to the performances of the second generation in the storyline, SHAREEK could have been a much finer product having an important message to give to its younger viewers.

Besides, bringing in the Hindi film enthusiast in me watching a Punjabi film, I many times felt as if the narration, the character of 'Jassa' and its overall treatment, more or less was highly inspired from the famous 'Tiger' of Mukul Anand's HUM (1990) majestically enacted by the one and only Amitabh Bachchan. SHAREEK's Jassa surely had the elements of Tiger in it in his various sequences as I strongly felt.

Coming to the most critical part of the review sharing an entirely contrasting study of SHAREEK as a realistic take on the bloody family rivalry between two brothers. Just try to think about each and every character of the film for a moment. Simply consider the persona of every single person participating in its long storyline going into decades and then see if you can find even a single positive character in the entire film right from its first sequence to the last giving some optimistic message.

No you will not, as there is none.

As a matter of fact, SHAREEK is a kind of unique eye-opener film with all NEGATIVE characters in the script giving an all POSITIVE message to the ones who are willing to learn.

So SHAREEK can also be considered as a clear mirror revealing that ugly state of Punjab, wherein family rivalries have eaten up many more lives along with the over famous political conspiracies of the last century. And I can only hope the film forces the present generation to finally think and move over this sick tradition…… instead of relating to the larger than life depiction on the screen……. enjoying it negatively!!!!

Jimmy Shergill is as always very magnetic, outperforming, and having a very strong screen presence. That plus the brilliant directing make Shareek a great movie!