Raajneeti – My View

Having seen the trailer of Raajneeti earlier in January this year, the movie with the usually non-performing Katrina Kaif in a lead role seemed to instantly capture my attention. Prakash Jha, the director of the movie has had great reviews on Gangajal (which I am yet to watch), and this definitely made me look forward to the movie more. The star cast of the movie – Ajay Devgn, Arjun Rampal, Katrina Kaif, Manoj Bajpai, Nana Patekar, Naseeruddin Shah, and Ranbir Kapoor seemed to a different blend of performing stars and eye candy stars, and was another thing that made me curious of how the star cast was going to be used.

Having seen it now, I surely am not disappointed by the movie. It deals with the current state of Indian politics, with corruption, dynasty-based politics, sex, exploitation of backward castes, and more importantly the opportunistic politicians. The story line of Raajneeti seems to be a routine one, liberally borrowing from Mahabharatha and Godfather, and the movies inspired by these, such as Dalapathi, Nayagan, Sarkar, Sarkar Raj and the like. Definitely a long watch at 3 hours (with no interval here), the movie seemed to have some good writing, cinematography, music and above all performances.

Ajay Devgn, Manoj Bajpai, and Nana Patekar are all seasoned actors, and a great performance is always expected out of them. And they do not disppoint. Manoj with great political aspirations exactly portrays what a neglected son of a politician would do. Ajay Devgn as Sooraj, the leader of the Dalits gives a realistic performance, but surely looks worn out in a few scenes. Nana Patekar as the party mentor, play crucial role in the movie proceeding and gives an underplayed but splendid performance. Naseeruddin Shah comes in a cameo is wasted in the role; just wish we got to see a little more of him.

Ranbir Kapoor as the silent mastermind behind all of the happenings, emerges as the new find in Raajneeti. He was surely good as the boy-next-door in Wake Up Sid, but this movie definitely brings out another dimension in this immensely talented actor.

Arjun Rampal, without his usual wooden expressions, gives a great performance as Prithvi. This is surely one of his best roles, along with Rock On! His characterization was quite interesting, as he oscillated between being a person with gray shades to a really good person. His outfits in the movie were too cool and definitely benefited his characterization.

Katrina Kaif doesn’t really have much to do in the proceedings of the movie initially, but surely has come a long way from the non-performing eye candy she used to be. Also, without her British accent, she definitely made a mark as the Indian political dynasty’s bahu (daughter in law). She had some really good ethnic outfits in the movie too!

The others stars contributed well to the movie as well, and definitely made a mark in their roles.

The movie as I said, reflects the state of Indian politics very well, and some scenes in the movie can be related to what we see in the TV news daily, especially during election times, when the dealings between political parties is in a denomination no less than tens of crores of rupees. The opportunistic attitude of the Indian politicians, and the state of how the wives of the Indian politicians retire to their fate and play a fiddle to their exploits, is quite well depicted too.

I loved the song Mora Piya, sung by Kavita Seth (of Iktara fame), and a few others running in the background. There were no full-fledged routine songs, which usually act as filler to a loose script. The script in this movie was quite tight and never was there a boring moment. The cinematography employed two schemes - a fresh theme for the outdoors, and a sober kinda nostlagic theme for the indoor scenes, and I loved it.

Raajneeti, despite it’s three hour length is a good watch for the performances and more!

(Image Courtesy: IndiaGlitz.com)