The Master Cometh. Review on Sarkar

“Nazdeek ke faayde se pahle door ka nuksaan soch lena chahiye”, quips Sarkaar to shut the mouth of a Tamilian gangster, cheekily called called Silver Mani, and you know that history is in the making, once again, through the passionately indulgent storytelling of Ram Gopal Verma. And the good news for millions of film fans, I guess across the world - Ramu is back. And before you ask the question dangling on your lips like that ciggie in the scene where wily Rasheed is about to be bumped off by a transformed Small B, let me clarify that Sarkaar is NOT Godfather, and the credit should be shared equally by the brilliant cast, the director and the technical team. So watch it as a fresh film without any prejudices, comparisons and dare I say, memories.

Subhash Nagre aka Sarkaar (Big B) is a parallel system of governance in himself who has won the hearts of common public through his love for justice. But like every outwardly happy man, he has his own problems too. The biggest one being, his own wayward son Vishnu (Kay Kay) who produces films and has a thing for his lead heroine although he is married with a son. Things get more complicated when his younger son Shankar (Abhishek) returns from US with a girlfriend Pooja (Katrina) in tow as his political opponents gang up to break the ‘thinking’ called Sarkaar. Vishnu’s clandestine support works wonders for them and they almost succeed in bumping-off Subhash Nagre. But all this while, they are counting one man out, Shankar, and in the end it’s this man who listens to the call of responsibility as well as of his own heart and settles the various matters concerning his family.

Big B, needless to say, is absolutely top-class as the understated yet very intense Subhash Nagre and after all you’ve seen of him in the recent years, he still makes you forget, for some scenes at least, that you are watching a man other than this strong but fragile Subhash Nagre. Kay Kay, whom many in the industry refer to as AB’s prodigal son, lives up to the title and character and one wonders, why don’t we see him more often in commercial cinema. The scene where he is cornered by Abhishek after being caught red-handed, tells you a lot about his ability to convey emotions without using words. Of the support cast, Rukhsaar, as the suffering yet graceful wife of Kay Kay deserves a special mention as she rarely speaks but almost always transmits her pain through either taking refuge with her young son’s mannerisms or giving silent approval to her husband’s killing. Sushma Pathak Kapoor as Mrs. Sarkaar, Tanishha as Abhishek’s childhood admirer and Ravi Kale as Chander, Sarkaar’s Executioner-in-chief are also impressive.

But the one to walk away with honors, accolades and the second-half of the film is undoubtedly the younger Bacchan, playing younger Sarkaar eventually. A cool head, a confused state, an uncontrollable anger or fear, a practical decision in love, and a heart larger than his head, he portrays each of these emotions with a style nobody had expected him to achieve some 12 months back. Though, his coming dressed in a business suit for the final revenge was a bit tacky on the director’s part, but Abhishek carried it off well too.

And the credit for all this should not be taken away from Ramu who has proved time and again, that he draws the line and others follow. In Sarkaar too, his technical excellence seeps through every pore on the face of the characters and I guess, for the first time, Indian audience is watching a ‘film in close-ups’. Yes, the close-ups of actors, one of the most difficult takes for an actor since it catches every muscle and its twitch, make more than 80 percent of the film and supported amazingly with the background score, they set the mood for a story very intense. The two background songs also have been used wonderfully and editing is crisp, though, at some points you wish the moment would just pass away. Like, the scene in hospital where Shankar comes to see his father lying unguarded, defenseless, for the first time.

The only aspect at which RGV has ensured a comparison with Godfather is the saucy one-liners given to Sarkaar. Lines like, ‘Agli baar jab yeh uska naam sune toh iske chehre par muskaan aani chaahiye’, ‘Taakat logon ko saath milaane se badhti hai, unhein khilaaf karne se nahin’ and ‘Nazdeek ka faayda...’ are some of the gems uttered by Sarkaar in his authoritative baritone. In the end, the only weak point in the film was the screenplay going haywire in the latter-half. Though the camera, performance and BG score tried to make up for it, one still feels that the sequences where Shankar uses his brother to track down the villains could have been more logical and smart.

But then, as Sarkaar would say, “Ab sab kuchh ek hi zindagi mein milna zaroori hai kya...?”