Movie Review – Chakravyuh

Prakash Jha has never shied away from making socially relevant movies which awaken the audience. Whether they are hits or misses, he is never afraid of moving towards uncharted territory. His accomplished repertoire of works includes movies like Gangaajal, Apaharan, Raajneeti and Aarakshan to name a few. And now he’s back yet again with Chakravyuh. Does it work? Let’s check it out.

The story revolves around three friends – Adil (Arjun Rampal), Kabir (Abhay Deol) and Rhea (Esha Gupta) who join a police academy together. But Kabir, the hot – headed guy he is, drops out much earlier and disappears for 7 long years only to reappear at a college reunion. Rhea and Kabir who get married are high ranking police officials by then. Adil gets transferred to Nandighat , an area so badly infested by the Naxals that even policemen fear for their lives. His mission – Capture their leader, Rajan (Manoj Bajpai). When all of Adil’s efforts go in vain, Kabir comes up with an interesting plan. Does Adil succeed? What’s Kabir’s plan? Is the Naxal movement extinguished? The rest of the flick talks about all this and more.

Top 10 Indian newsmakers of 2011!

2011 has been a pretty interesting year in many terms. From the highs of India’s World Cup victory on April 2nd to the lows of the 2G scam and the death of many prominent personalities, we have seen it all. But nothing could beat Team Anna and their campaign to bring forward the Jan Lokpal Bill.

As far as the Indian industry is concerned, Infosys and Tata lost their captains to youngsters of the next generation. But Kingfisher began facing some serious turbulence in its flight of “Good Times”. “Kolaveri” and “Flash Mobs” became the buzzwords among all of us for their own reasons.

Movie Review – Rajneeti

Rajneeti is one of the biggest movies of our times in terms of the number of stars (or so called stars ) it has. They cast includes Ajay Devgan, Manoj Bajpai, Ranbir Kapoor, Arjun Rampal, Nana Patekar, Nasseruddin Shah (in a blink and a miss role), Katrina Kaif and many others. It is directed by Prakash Jha of Apharan, Gangaajal fame. So you can be sure that this movie is gonna be up there in the list of hard hitting realistic movies!

The movie starts off with a fiery speech from a leftist leader, Nasserudin Shah against the govt where one of his lines aga goes like “Yeh Janta bhookh ki maari hai, inhe do wakt ki roti de do ya paise de do yeh kisi bhi party ka jhande utha lenge”. After hearing this in the first few minutes you realise that this movie is gonna be one hell of a ride. One mistake by him sends him on a self imposed exile which introduces rest of other characters of the cast. Partly inspired by Mahabharata and the Godfather, this movie grips you throughout those 3 hours.

Sleeping with a woman to give her an election ticket, buying seats in an election with money, giving people money to come to the rallies, rigging of electronic voting machines, populist politics you name it each of these issues and more is tackled in this drama.

Many people may find the movie intense, violent and too serious. But thats the nature of the subject and Prakash Jha deserves accolades for that. Even the songs More Piya and Bheegi Si have been reduced to few seconds. Assembling such a huge starcast is a mammoth achievement in itself but giving them equal author backed roles is the perfect icing on the cake.

Ranbir Kapoor, Manoj Bajpai and Arjun Rampal are the standout performers by a distance. I was really surprised by the way all these three potrayed their different roles in such an amazing manner. Katrina Kaif does a pretty decent job as a Sonia Gandhi lookalike though she doesnt have much of a role other than giving a very melodramatic speech in the end.

In the end the amazing performances and fantastic story with the constant twists and turns where each one is behind the other baying for his / her blood make this movie a must watch experience for every movie lover.

Rating – 4.5 / 5