Sakar Raj: Review

Anirvan Ghosh reviews Sarkar Raj

Sarkar Raj (2008)

Sarkar Raj makes a mockery of conventional shots, and the tone. And for that very reason, it falls flat on its face. The plethora of close shots is not just irritating, its totally jarring, and combined with the sepia tone is a torture for the eyes, even though the plot is not bad, and the acting performances are classy. And that is quite some achievement given that his last movie was like the worst of all time.

In the second installment of the Sarkar series, Subhash Nagre (Amitabh Bachchan), the original Sarkar, takes a backseat as son Shankar Nagre (Abhishek Bachchan) takes hold of the family empire. An NRI industrialist Anita Ranjan (Aishwarya Rai) approaches the Nagre family with a power plant project to be set in the local lands of Maharashtra under Sarkar’s domain. After initial reluctance, Sarkar gives a go ahead to the venture that soon takes shape of a political conspiracy.

It starts getting monotonous here, as Nagre and Ranjan go around convincing the villagers of the benefits of the project. Then appears a Raj Thakeray-specs wearing character called Sanjay Somji (Rajesh Shringapure) who creates a ruckus with fiery speeches against the Nagres and Rai’s company and manages to turn public opinion against the Nagres.

The characterizations are repetitive. Again we have a quartet of people intent on bringing down Sarkar. I can understand having the same background score, since that one of the ways to remind the viewer that this is a sequel, and to be honest, the score works. But the characters are just mirror images of the same villainy that we saw in Sarkar and is thus, totally unoriginal. Sayaji Shinde chatters endlessly while Govind Namdeo and Upendra Limaye are consistently theatrical, appearing more as comic sidekicks than as the ruthless plotters that Gopal wants to show.

The whole film seems like a disparate series of finely composed frames, as if Ram Gopal Varma videotaped his attempts at photographing a calendar for the Bachchan family. Aishwarya Rai, is still not a good actress though she had just one chance in the scene where she cries as Shankar Nagre lies on the hospital bed. She doesn’t have anything to do really, besides saying a line about a power plant survey in English and then, teary eyed, listening to men talk. Abhishek Bachchan continues to simmer, but he is getting good at acting only such broodingly serious roles and seems to have a very limited repertoire where he can actually excel. His character in this movie never quite comes to the boil. His job profile here is frowning sans emotion, be it at a sarcastic old politician or the death of his wife.

The plot works and as the conspiracy is finally unraveled, all the parts fall into place quite nicely. You can think of what happened earlier and appreciate that unlike most Bollywood flicks, this one has taken care to have a coherent storyline. But when Shankar Nagre moves for the kill, it seems brazenly easy and unnaturally pacy. Speaking of which, I must say that Varma’s attempt to make every scene dramatic has fallen flat because of the resultant loss of drama.

The uniform sepia tone of the movie gives it an unnatural touch. Had it been used only for the flashbacks, it would have worked, as in Coppola’s masterly Godfather – II. But here it serves to give a depressing tone to the entire movie, a kind of dusty feel, which is at odds with the incidents. It may have worked once in Sarkar, simply because it was different, but here it adds a dull ambience.

There are some good one liners and riveting scenes, but they are few and do not manage to hold on the viewer’s interest for long. By the time the movie ends, you feel that it could have been made better had it been half an hour shorter. That’s much better than the pathetic Aag, Varma’s previous utterly forgettable flick.

I would recommend this movie only for ardent fans of the Bachchan family. As for those who liked the frontrunner Sarkar, please watch that again than going for this one.

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