Rajneeti

My brother told me that Rajneeti was a mix of the Mahabharata and The Godfather - I decided to see the movie for myself to see how good or bad of a job they had done - and the verdict - not too bad at all. It was a tad too long but kept me engrossed for the most part except that I still cannot quite believe that politics in India is such a dirty business... that may be my naive side talking. I mean I have no illusions that politics is this super clean world but in this movie they take it to the next level - people killing people in cold blood with no remorse at all, barter of personal relationships in the name of politics... basically anything goes - the end justifies the means.

The plot definitely borrows heavily from the Mahabharata with the daughter of a major political figure getting pregnant through a brief affair. In efforts to cover up the scandal, her brother takes the baby and abandons him - the baby grows to be Ajay Devgan whose foster father coincidentally works for his biological mother's family as a driver (Kunti and Karna anyone?) Arjun Rampal and Ranbir play brothers - half brothers of Ajay Devgan (whose character is named Suraj) in the movie who ends up on the opposite side of the political play with their cousin played by Manoj Bajpai. It borrows from The Godfather with the younger son (Ranbir's Samar) who initially is far removed from the family's world of politics and ends up slowly becoming the main player and the brains behind the party despite his older brother being the face of the party. Katrina plays a family friend's daughter Indu, madly in love with Samar. However Samar has a girlfriend in the US and only agrees to marry her to have her father finance their party - her father however wants her to marry the older son because he will be CM. For whatever reason she agrees to the match and marries the older son. It is soon revealed to the family that Samar has a girlfriend and she comes to live with him in India.

As Samar is drawn deeper into the world of lies, cover-ups and deceit that is politics Sarah insists on leaving because she cannot bear to raise her as-yet unborn baby in that environment. Samar decides to leave with her but a bomb sets off (ostensibly set by Suraj and their cousin) and she and the older brother end up dead. Samar is once again required to step up to the task of running the party and the family ends up anointing Indu as the candidate for CM. A lot of blood and gore later, the movie ends with Indu becoming Chief Minister and Samar deciding to go back to the US leaving behind the murky world of politics.

On the whole, the movie was pretty decent but I found it a tad too long and all this without the usual unnecessary songs that usually make up a typical Hindi movie. Some of the scenes in the movie were unintentionally hilarious - there is a scene in the hospital where Samar's uncle ends up having a heart attack and they are trying to use the defibrillator and it is just hilarious - I have watched enough ER and Grey's Anatomy to know at least how the process should look and this movie did it no justice at all. The nurse just barely touched the paddles to him. An added bonus was that I watched the movie with the sub-titles on and the translation was atrocious. I honestly believe that reading the sub-titles is more entertaining than the movie these days.

All the characters do a decent job overall - I liked Katrina Kaif better in this movie than all her movies with Akshay Kumar. Ranbir Kapoor did a good job as usual. It's now expected of him. Arjun Rampal is getting much better as an actor... he is finally leaving behind his modeling days and his non-actor label :) Manoj Bajpai and Ajay Devgan were good too. There was nobody in the main cast that let their characters down.

I would say this is a DVD watch because you can forward through a few scenes rather than sitting through the whole thing. Some scenes are very violent but what is a hindi movie without some masala...