Jan 23, 2010 05:34 PM
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The main problem with Veer, is that it’s story could be written twice in one sms - and to make up for this story bankrupcy, the movie relies heavily on special effects and cinematography. The script stumbles from one scene to the next - and never really engages the audience.
Instead of a story, the director / writers seem to have a checklist - so we have a train robbery, 3 - 4 large canvas battle scenes, typical song situations, the hero makes a speech about India, speaks out against animal sacrifice and after his 3rd or may be it was the 4th man to man fight, with his father for some bizarre reason, the movie stumbles to a climax. Not such a boring checklist actually, but in Veer, these scenes are blatantly mechanical, completely boring and unintentionally funny.
But to begin at the beginning - where was the beginning? Since it is considered hip, the movie needlessly starts in one period, then minutes later jumps to another period, then moves forward in that period - Ekta Kapoor would be confused be these time leaps. Anyways, Mithun is one of the chiefs of the Pindhari tribe, who are betrayed by the Madhavgarh king, Jackie Shroff. After Jackie and his british friends kill 4, 500 of his men - Mithun vows to avenge their death.
For 25 years he does not act on this vow, but after that his son Veer / Salman is now supposed to settle the score. After falling for what seems to be a british girl, Salman goes to England, runs into that same girl and discovers that she is actually an indian - Yashodhara, the princess of Madhavgarh. He kills her brothers, but that does not seem to make an iota of difference to Yashodhara. After many such illogical twists and convolutions, the hero finally avenges the almost forgotten massacre!
On the technical side, the special effects are great … probably the best that we have seen in hindi movies. The camera work is technically great, but has no connection with the story. When the tribe is mourning a massacre, we get flourishing crane shot. And by contrast the hero’s ‘entry’ is with a simple front shot of him breaking trough dry branches. Battles scenes look good, but without any close ups of soldiers we do not get their feel. In one scene, the heroine chases a maid to retrieve a letter she prematurely wrote - instead of even a single ‘worry’ close up, we just get wide angle shots of her running through a palace. Divorced from the story - the excellent camera work is criminally wasted. This is also Sajid Wajid’s best score till date - but wasted by clunky placement and repetition.
On the acting front, Salman Khan is custom tailored for the role of a medieval prince - and his screen presence is very much in evidence, but in the absence of a coherent script, even he cannot retrieve this royal mess. Puru Rajkumar as a spoilt prince is very good, but is very quickly bumped off. Mithun, Jackie, Zarine Khan, Sohail Khan are ok. Neena Gupta, Bharat Dabholkar and many other actors are embarrassingly wasted and only serve as furniture props.
All in all, without a coherent story and script, technical brilliance is of little use. While Veer is sure to induce a headache, for its special effects and cinematography we would have to give it 1.5 stars.
