Usually, you would not expect Naseeruddin Shah to be consigned to a 5-minute mini-cameo in a socio-political thriller, especially after seeing him to be one amongst the eight 'stars' depicted on the poster. Nevertheless, if one wished to see good performances, this reasonably fast-paced attempt at a 3-hour adaptation of the great Indian epic, the Mahabharat, would not disappoint. Be it the GenerationX-esque exploits of the calm-and-collected-and-murderous Sooraj Kumar (played by the ever-so-non-versatile Ajay Devgn - apparently the latest prey of numerology) or the power-hungry Virendra Pratap (Manoj Bajpai, excellent, bravo!!) or his power-hungry cousin Prithviraj Pratap (Arjun Rampal, suprisingly expressive - and impressive) or the latter's younger-US-return-budding-Ph.D-able-to-do-anything-for-his-family-including-taking-a-slap-on-his-cheek-and-falling-to-the-floor-in-one-great-aerial-circle-and-apologising-to-a-corrupt-police-officer-for-no-mistake-of-his bro, Samar (Ranbir with his usual, intelligent under-act) or the shrewdly lackadaisical Brij Gopal (Nana Patekar at his non-violent best) or the silent victim Bharti Rai (Nikhila Trikha, brilliant), everyone plays his / her part quite well.
The opening half-an-hour though makes you feel inclined to develop some self-inflicted bald spots at the prospect of losing your bucks (especially the horribly picturised sequence in the hospital, where the founder of the Rashtriya Janshakti Party, Bhanu Pratap Singh is admitted after suffering a paralytic stroke - the entire scene looks hastily improvised to say the least - and chants like 'jab tak suraj chand rahega, bhanu pratap ka naam rahega' which occupy half of the screen time, contribute as well). But as the movie progresses, the mind-games and more so, the murder-games materialise between the cousins and their families. The film reaches a crescendo at half-time when the plot appears to thicken and the audience is tempted to forgo that extra-large bucket of popcorn so as to avoid missing the beginning of the second half, what with Ranbir Kapoor's character being unveiled gradually as he comes into his own. But with the expectation of the plot thickening comes the disappointment of the realisation that there is no plot in the first place - just both parties taking out men from each other with slightly innovative methods admittedly. But the only motivation to watch by this time remains to see which party is the victorious one in the end, and anyone having a less-than-decent idea of the culmination in Mahabharat would be able to guess the outcome - but, waiting for it is actually less excruciating than one would expect from a three-hour virtually song-less movie. So, that is a reason sufficient, I guess, for granting some instinctual brownie points.
The movie had a chance halfway to turn out to be legendary, but in the end it falls short of being even a must-watch, as one can't help but notice certain deficiencies. Katrina Kaif and Sarah Thompson could have been given much more substantial jobs than just being conscientious good-lookers, atleast one (male) politician could have been reasonably expected to decide that politics is not worth all the bloodshed and could have withdrawn from the mess, Prithvi and Samar's dead dad (some Pratap Singh, can't remember the first name) could have actually held his breath for some time - come on man, he was clearly breathing his way through the whole shot under the white cloth, (at the risk of repeating myself) Nasseruddin Shah's fans could have clearly hoped for him to be assigned some more footage than just being the quintessential surya devta, some nice compositions could have been effectively used in the background (but then, no songs are better than bad songs, especially in the background), some dialogues could have been eliminated or rather, replaced by silent expressions by making use of the talents available at disposal (once Ranbir goes something like - "Pata hai yahaan media ke paas freedom hai, lekin iska yeh matlab nahi ki media us freedom ko leke hum par aatank machae" - Why?!?!?! No dialogues are better than bad dialogues. Period.)
Despite all the flaws though, the urgency with which the audience got up as soon as the credits started rolling, was certainly unwarranted. Good cinematography coupled with excellent performances always produce a cocktail worth trying rather than not trying. And if one gets an irresistible urge to go to a multiplex at least once every month, then Raajneeti should be a pretty good bet, because as the quality of contemporary Bollywood movies suggests, this could be the best non-Aamir Khan-starrer for a long time to come (I would have held high hopes from 'Raavan' if I hadn't had the misfortune to not skip 'Guru').
My rating: 3 / 5.
