Last weekend, with a lot of enthusiasm (and people) I went to see Rajaneeti - A Prakash Jha film with some of the best names in the Indian film Industry. By now all of you must have seen the film, so I will not get into detailing the plot or the storyline. Let's straight get to the point - did I like it? No. It was OK! But when Prakash Jha makes an OK movie, it is not acceptable. I would have liked an OK Ram Gopa Verma movie but not PJ. Probably Shool & Apaharan ( I have not seen Mrutyudand), built up a lot of expectations.
Rajaneeti, needless to say, is better than many of the recent films like Teen Patti, MNIK and what not. It has more substance than a one liner and the effort into story and screenplay shows. PJ has spent enough effort (and money) on casting with brilliant characters drawn from Mahabharat. In my opinion, nowhere else in the whole world, is there a characterisation like there is in Hindu mythology. None of the characters are black or white and all have their shades of grey. It was indeed a masterstroke from PJ to base his characters on Mahabharat. The casting was superb (but for three actors...more about it later). Many of the dialogs were well written and had the punch of a political background. The film did have a good graph throughout that kept me engaged, but...
Dialogs like ' tum mere jeshtha putra ho' - what the hell was this guy thinking man. Copy paste kiya kya Mahabharat se? All the hard work he did on 'Karara jawaab milega' he spoilt it all.
Why the fuck in the whole wide world would someone use 'Vande Mataram' tune in the climax scene? Yuck! Thankfully it was at the end so I was anyway walking out.
When PJ writes his own 'Three Mistakes of my life', they would be his 3 casting failures from Rajaneeti. I don't believe this is the same guy who boldly cast Dr. Mohan Agashe as the idealistic father in Apaharan. Just because she looks western, was there really any need to have Katrina Kaif on board? Did the character demand a western look? Bloody marketing gimmicks!! I would have preferred a mannequin dressed in a starched cotton saree on the screen. Nikhila Trikha, the actor playing Bharati, Ranbeer Kapoor's on screen mother was another failure. She had a fantastic scene with Ajay Devgan where she tells him that he is her eldest son (jeshtha putra). I wanted underplay and she went overboard with melodrama. Lastly, lets face it Arjun Rampal is basically a model, has a bad diction and should not have been cast. Kay Kay Menon would have been my man for the job.
That's about it...I am going out for a game of bowling. Catch you later!
