Sarbjit Review

Production designer turned Director Omung Kumar started his directorial innings with a box office success after Mary Kom went on to be a hit. Now he’s back with his second film, another social film about a man who was well known: Sarabjit Singh. But he has chosen to tell the story of his sister Dalbir Kaur instead. Will he able to deliver another hit and will Aishwariya Rai Bachchan finally get a hit? Time to find out.

Story: Sarbjit starts with an Indian farmer Sarbjit Singh Atwal (Randeep Hooda) who drunkenly crossing the border to Pakistan and then gets captured by the Pakistan authorities who label him as an Indian spy. He keeps languishing in jail for more than 2 decades while his sister Dalbir Kaur (Aishwariya) crusades in India to get him freed from jail. Her pleas fall into deaf ears and the Indian authorities don’t do anything. Sarbjit’s wife Sukhpreet (Richa Chadha) and his two daughters keep bearing the grief of not seeing him. We all know the fate of Sarbjit and the film toes similar lines.

Screenplay and Direction: Omung Kumar who got away with bizarre story and casting decisions in Mary Kom repeats his mistakes. He is unable to focus on a part of Sarbjit’s or Dalbir’s story and instead makes it a saga with too many high pitched melodramatic scenes. Sarbjit could have done with deft handling of the emotional scenes and subtlety would have been the way to go for such an emotionally disparaging story. Even though there’s a lot of material to sift through, the movie jogs along and is plagued by too many slow scenes.

Sarbjit Review

Sarbjit is made a lot better by the cinematography showcased in the movie. There’s a lot of maturity in the way the film has been shot. The detailing is also upto the mark, but the editing lags behind with many scenes going on for far too long. The music of Sarbjit is decent with no chart toppers.

Acting: Aishwariya is the face of the movie Sarbjit and if you had no idea about the story of the movie, you’d think she was playing the title role. Unfortunately, she is grossly miscast as Sarbjit’s sister as she is unable to put forth the tenacity and the determination in her expressions. She tries her level best but cannot even get her Punjabi diction right. The other female actress in this movie Richa Chadha shines in whatever scenes she has been given, and it makes the audience wonder if she would have been better suited for the role of Dalbir Kaur. Randeep Hooda, as Sarbjit, is fantastically cast and he shows his potential as an actor in this movie. He gets the diction, the expressions, the physical similarities and even the mental instability of the character just right. Darshan Kumar is good in his role as the Pakistani lawyer.

Conclusion: Sarbjit is a missed opportunity of a tragic count. A story like this, which has the power to showcase the trials and tribulations faced by humans due to man made borders, should have been dealt with a lot more gravitas. It suffers from such a fate because of the Bollywoodisation of this social story and because it makes this a star vehicle when it had no business being one. Even if we overlook the bad casting decision, Sarbjit just doesn’t hold fort as a movie because it lags too much and is not able to hold the attention of the viewers for far too long even with all the melodrama. Sometimes, subtlety works better than melodrama. This movie is a shining example of that.

Pros:

• Randeep Hooda and Richa Chadha in their roles
• The detailing of the movie seems accurate

Cons:

• The fake unnecessary jingoism showcased
• The gross miscasting of Aishwariya Rai Bachchan and her failure to bring the character of Dalbir Kaur to life
• Overdose of melodrama when all it needed was subtlety
• The slow pace of the movie

Rating: (0.5 extra for Randeep Hooda)