Sarkar Raj Movie Review

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Govind Namdeo, Tanisha Mukherjee, Victor Banerjee, Supriya Pathak

Direction: Ram Gopal Varma

Production: Nitin Chandrachud, Abhijit Ghatak, Praveen Nischol

Written by: Prashant Pandey , Ram Gopal Varma

With Sarkar, Ram Gopal Varma had precisely established the central characters, set the ambience, defined the aura and demarcated the genre. So in the follow-up he simply had to take the legend ahead while narrating a new episode. And to a decent degree he succeeds in carrying the legacy forward.

In the second installment, Sarkar aka Subhash Nagre (Amitabh Bachchan) takes a backseat as son Shankar Nagre (Abhishek Bachchan) takes hold of the family empire. An NRI industrialist Anita Ranjan (Aishwarya Rai) approaches the Nagre family with a power plant project to be set in the local lands of Maharashtra under Sarkar’s domain. After initial reluctance, Sarkar gives a go ahead to the venture which soon takes shape of a political conspiracy.

Ramu’s storytelling pattern is such that he initially builds up the drama and subsequently breaks down the politics behind the play. He effectively employs all the original techniques from the predecessor by making use of the same theme for the background score (Amar Mohile), caustic editing pattern (Amit Parmar, Nipun Gupta), sepia tone effect and erratic camera angles (Amit Roy).

But while adhering to the original, he occasionally, also sets up repetitiveness in the screenplay with similar setup and shot execution. For instance he sketches a group of negative forces absolutely analogous like the villain quartet from Sarkar with identical intentions to crumple the Nagre kingdom. Reprehensibly their caricature characterizations do not gel with the solemn temper of the film. Sayaji Shinde hams endlessly while Govind Namdeo and Upendra Limaye are consistently theatrical, appearing more as comic sidekicks.

To an extent, even the screenplay is moulded in the vein of the forerunner film when Shankar wages a political war against his opponents. But the treatment is twisted as Ramu reverses the roleplay of the father-son duo in this film in clear contrast to the format adopted in the earlier episode. While the father takes a backseat in the initial reels giving authority to son, he grabs charge of the proceedings in the concluding portions.

Like in Sarkar, Ramu sharply balances the role runtime of both the father and the son justifying the collective presence of Amitabh Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan. But he simultaneously swaps their zones of prominence thereby bringing a variation in their contribution. Despite drama being the highlight, the texture is subtle throughout.

From a political war, the film intermittently shifts track to a regular revenge drama till it arrives to a volatile climax that forms a highlight of the enterprise, escalating the entire graph. Sarkar Raj clearly gains major marks for its clever culmination, which was so much lacking from recent RGV products. The considerately and crisply penned dialogues by Prashant Pandey add a lot of insight to the scenes and depth to the characterizations.

From the cast, Aishwarya Rai plays a mere spectator to the scenes than a participant to the politics. She is her usual self and her act doesn’t seem to be sculpted by the RGV touch. The other two Bachchans have exhaustive scope and completely submit to Ramu’s visualization.

Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan, once again, employ the intensity of their piercing eyes to give sight to Ram Gopal Varma’s distinctive vision.

Verdict: Sarkar Raj was widely heralded as an homage to the Godfather trilogy, though director Ram Gopal Varma refutes comparisons, describing Sarkar Raj as “the new adventures of the Nagare family…. showcasing the aura of power.”

Rating: 3 stars on 5