A few days back, I went to watch Sarkar Raj at Nandan. It was after ages that I went and stood in a queue, with anticipations about whether I will get the tickets or not, and then rushed into the hall after the final bell rang, and the reel had started rolling. In fact, it was again, after a long long time, that I sat in almost a front row, with the screen looming large over my head :)Sarkar Raj is a sequel to Ram Gopal Verma's much acclaimed Sarkar, starring Amitabh, Abhishek and Aishwarya Bachchan [:) he could as well have cast Jaya Bachchan a role too - the family circle would have completed ]. Somehow I did not like Sarkarraj as much as I like the previous film. It lacked the crispness and cutting edge flow of Sarkar. I felt uncomfortable about the camera work in various scenes, especially crowd scenes, where the continuously moving and sweeping camera was creating a nauseating effect - I am not sure whether it was intended or not, surely the director had something in mind, when he decided to take such weeping shots, but I did not like them. And finally somehow, Aishwarya Rai failed to convince me of her character, however much she tried. I felt, she is yet to learn how to come out of of her own self and imbibe her characters fully. There was something wrong about her, She was not the right choice for the role.I often feel Aishwarya Rai's main negative trait is her beauty. She is too beautiful to be real. And she looks best in dream girl characters, but not in a blood -and-grit character like the one in Sarkarraj. And her pairing with Abhishek, incidentally her husband was the last nail she needed!! While an intense scene was unraveling on screen,where Shankar Nagre [Abhishek] is stating the fact that he knows Anita [Aishwarya] loves him, the whole house was giggling and laughing, to see just another love story unfold between the already famous lovebirds!!To sum up, for me at least, Sarkar Raj was not up to the mark. The film ended again with a hint of another sequel, so we can expect to see a "Sarkarraj 2" next year perhaps, and if that be so, I would wish it to be as crisp and cold as Sarkar.
Sunday, June 22, 2008