In The Jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight

Tagore reviews Sarkar Raj

Firstly – reviewing anything that has my dada (Mr. Amithab Bachchan – yes the very towering, larger than the rest of us person) is very emotional for me. He is my Mr. Bachchan, has always been and I hope always will be. I watched Sarkar Raj a few days ago and it’s taken me this long to put down my review in writing. My sincere message to Mr. Bachchan “please sir, please. Stop working with Mr. Ram Gopal Verma’. To you my readers “No, Sarkar Raj is NOT A BAD FILM, it is just a half made film by a man who is full of himself, and arrogantly cannot see beyond his self desires and selfishly doesn’t give a shit about how this will effect his cast and crew”.

Reel Life – This is not a sequel. It is, as Mr. RGV said, a different chapter in the lives of the Nagre household. Yes but it does pick up from where the pervious film (a near to classic product) left. Shekar Nagre has taken over from his very convincingly powerful father – the Sarkar! He has married the girl we assumed he was going to marry. He has killed his brother and that does ripple across in this film too. Anyways the film is about a certain Mrs. Rai-Bachchan who comes to India (hold your breath – she is the daughter of a ‘huge’ company from London that wants to set up a electricity plant in Maharashtra. Sarkar isn’t convinced about this, and image this, it’s not someone normal, but ‘the’ Sarkar not liking the idea, BUT he never says why (which is ok), but when his son says that he wants to, Sarkar just gives in (Out goes the well being of people philosophy). This turns into a dirty political game amongst Sarkar’s enemies and it leads to drastic measures. Sarkar himself has to take control again and put forth what is right and punish those who have seriously caused him loss. In the end, Sarkar rules his domain.

Real Life – If you do wrong, if you kill, it will all come back to you. What you do onto others, the world will do back to you. So trust me, this message is loud and clear here. Another message in the film is that, in politics, no matter what you see, it surely doesn’t mean that it is just that. So to all you young men and women out there, who want to take short cuts in life, by cheating, killing etc, beware, it will come back to haunt you.

Cinematically – RGV does carry the ‘Visual’ texture of Sarkar into Sarkar Raj. Visually the film does keep up to mark with the first installment. The acting is good. I won’t say excellent, simply because the script and the direction does not allow them to make their acting skill excellent. Here, whenever a lame dialogue was said, the background score took over so loudly with “Govinda, Govinda, Govinda”. Something that worked amazingly good in the first film but here it just tries to cover up for the lack of impact in the writing and in the delivery. The story is absolutely crap. RGV made the biggest mistake of his life by remaking Sholay, and here he does the same mistake by sort of making an extension to Sarkar. The characters that were so well defined and real in Sarkar, have been completely f&^ked up in this film, by none other than Mr. RGV himself. I mean, Abhishek’s character is very introvert but strong within. He was intelligent but more importantly he was no where near like his elder brother’s (Kay Kay) character. Here in this film when his wife dies, he is saddened and angry and all, BUT within minutes he is ready to start a relationship with Mrs. Rai Bachchan.!! What? Hello? Then you have Sarkar himself, who is such a towering character, he knows his friends but knows his enemies better. Here he is, confiding and letting into his inner world Mrs. Rai Bachchan’s character. On what grounds? What did she do to earn the trust of Sarkar? Infact everything that she represented led to the loss of Sarkar. What? Hello? Finally, Chander, ‘the’ right hand man of Sarkar, who stood up to even Kay Kay, in the previous film when Kay Kay speaks loudly to Sarkar, is made out to be a traitor and someone who wanted to overthrow Sarkar. God it was pathetic. The bad boys in this film were really cheap third grade actors who make the bad boys in a cheap Ramsay brother’s film look more convincing. I mean the shooter who came in was so stupid with his finger action and all that you just wanted to puke. Best of it was that there is a 5 minute (felt like that long) dialogue between Sarkar and this phirangi returned chick (Mrs. Rai Bachchan) wherein Sarkar has all the time to explain to her what had happened, who had done the bad and what and how he got his revenge. Eh, looks like the director realized that there was a huge missing gap here, that he just got the lines thrown in to explain some missing stuff. Mr. RGV is infatuated with the Bachchans, and is disrespecting his association with them. He really is. Mrs. Rai Bachchan was in frames only coz she was..well one the Bachchans. And he needs to show that off, doesn’t he?

In Conclusion – Never again. Never again will I want to watch another RGV film. Sarkar Raj just reminded me that this was the arrogant fool who made AAG, a supposedly remake of the classic Sholay. Once bitten twice shy – Mr. Bachchan, please protect yourself and your family members from falling flat on their faces. Do that, by not making films with this man called RGV. One question though, forget RGV’s pathethic state of mind right now, and the arrogance pouring out of his backside, what happened to the Bachchan’s? Didn’t they read the script? Are they not capable of seeing a stupid, pathetic, foolish script when they see one? Sarkar Raj, is not a film, it was just an idea, suggested perhaps to a director who can think of NOTHNG and NOBODY else but his ego and his arrogance. I do not think that he is dumb and stupid, after all, look back the years and some of his films will prove that. Sorry Sir, but Mr RGV I cannot believe that you are the same guy who made, Rangeela, Bhoot, Company, Kaun, etc? Infact I cannot believe that you are the same man, who made Sarkar.

My name is Tagore Almeida, and I am based out of Dubai. I am a technologist by profession and I guess a disheartened film critic by birth. I run a peace and humanitarian site. Read more about me at www.tagorealmeida.com