Love it or hate it, but Salman Khan’s Veer is one heck of a brave effort, something we would like to call a “Veeroic” effort.
At a time when comedies rule the roost in Bollywood, Salman Khan and co. opted for something distinctly different. A mixture of history, mythology and nationalism narrated with a fine balance of romance, comedy, action and the age old formulaic masala.
Also, Salman is a writer to watch out for in the future. He has great sense of drama and sets up the movie pretty well. The romantic portions were well-written and the dilemma of the princess – to choose between her kingdom or lover – was potentially a great plot for a thrilling second half, that it didn’t happen is the director and screenplay writer’s fault.
Sure, the film is not without its share of major flaws, but then its the effort we are talking about here, something both the media and critics for some reason have overlooked.
Quick recall, and history based films have always been risky, the mightiest of them have failed (Read SRK with Asoka and Aamir with Mangal Pandey). Spending 50 crores plus makes it even more riskier.
So purely for the risk and effort the makers have taken and the fact that the film has managed to do reasonably well at the box office, Veer deserves a mention as one of the first successful films of the year and the decade.