One of my favorite pastimes here, apart from searching for a job, is watching movies. This you may have already figured out by the amount of movie reviews posted on this blog. This time the review is about two movies that got released recently. One loosely based on the Mahabharata and Godfather, and the other on the Ramayana. Yes! I am talking about ‘Rajneeti’ and ‘Raavan’.
I am sure you’d have read umpteen reviews, criticisms, opinions, ratings etc etc on both these considering the amount of publicity they have generated. They sure raked up quite a lot of hype too!
Here’s my take on both of them!
Rajneeti – a movie that’s loosely based on the Mahabharata, and draws upon a few scenes from Godfather.
I enjoyed watching this movie. Of course, I had read a lot of reviews about the movie, knew the story outline, and who / what most of the characters represented or portrayed. Like Raavan, this movie generated mixed reviews too. I have friends who both liked the movie and others who hated it and felt it was stupid. I liked it because of the fact that it was publicized as a political drama and advertised as being loosely based on the epic. And the movie was just that! It stuck to its promise of how it was advertised and reminded me of Sarkar and Sarkar Raj in some scenes thanks to the Godfather angle.
Fair enough, there were scenes in the movie that could have been done away with, dialogues that could have been rephrased and all that… but at the end of it, I enjoyed it … it was a good watch. Trying to match the characters from the epic to the actors who played them on screen was fun too… the debate is still on as to what characters Nana Patekar portrayed. I felt he was a mix of Bheeshma and Krishna while some say that he was Vidur. I don’t know about that ‘coz the last scene sort of clinched the Lord Krishna characterization. Ranbir is definitely developing into a fine actor. His portrayal of Arjuna along with shades of Michael Corleone makes him irresistible in some scenes. As for Katrina, she should work a lot on her diction. Naseerudin Shah is totally wasted. Manoj Bajpai and Ajay Devgan have done a good job too… It’s a pleasure to watch Bajpai on screen after a while. But for me, the star of the movie was Arjun Rampal. Man! Does he look dishy in the political avatar! And I thought he did a pretty decent job of acting too! Overall, a good watch.
And now for the most awaited movie of recent times – Raavan – based on the Ramayana.
Long awaited, this movie was, drawing all sorts of speculation from people and critics and the industry at large. And the expectations it raised among the public was of unimaginable heights. I watched the Hindi version and I was sorely disappointed. Maybe the Tamil version would have been more enjoyable.
There were a few things about the movie that I really liked too. The locales, camera work, cinematography, were just stunning! Absolutely breath-taking. Priyamani’s acting – awesome! She was brilliant as the victimized sister! Also acting by Ravi Kissen, Govinda, and the guy who played Hemant – Nikhil I think his name is, they have done a commendable job.
Vikram’s diction was bad. It sounded to me like my Hindi – with a nice South Indian accent to it. He should have had someone dub for him. Aishwarya looked pretty in the movie and her acting was good too. For me Abhishek was the most disappointing. He had so much of potential with his role and he utilized just about 50% of it.
Yes it’s a done to death story. Yes it’s loosely based on the Ramayana. Again I say loosely based, because in Ramayana, Rama was not shown to be so cunning and ruthless as Dev was mainly because he was the Hero of the epic. Why they attacked the sister in the first place without any provocation at all disrupting the wedding is highly questionable, atleast for me. The characters might all be the same. Drawn upon inspiration from one of the most heroic epics of our history but the bottomline, the story resulted in not living upto my expectations. Waiting to watch the Tamil version now… and that’s solely for Vikram as Raavanan.
Like I said, it’s my take on the movies. Both of them have received mixed reviews and I am sure mine falls at one end of either review.
