Well, Omung Kumar’s Mary Kom was well appreciated and luckily his lack of skills were well covered by the manipulations and some decent performance by Priyanka Chopra. Iam afraid Omung Kuma might not be lucky second time, as his manipulations are clearly visible in Sarabjit. He has also picked up a story where he has a scope to apply maximum manipulations and strike gold.
The story of Sarabjit is a case of prisoning an Indian in Pakistan and how he got stuck there for so many years. He is imprisoned on the other side of border. Now this will give good scope to exploit the patriotism and Indo-Pak heat and contribute to viewer’s interest. And the lady who fights for Sarabjit happens to be Aishwarya Rai which is like her comeback film as Jazba went without a trace. Like Omung Kumar, Aishwarya Rai also seemed to have thought to exploit this opportunity to make her presence felt in the age of Deepikas, Parinetis and Anushkas. She is given a leading role, and the freedom to over-act at any level. She is shown from the young age to older age, with gradually greying hair, but a diction and body language that can only get on your nerves.
Aishwarya gets shrill and shouts at the top of her voice. That was supposed to be effective but it ends up as annoying artificial melodrama. Her body language and dialogues are supposed to arouse the anger in us, but the anger come to the viewer because of the way Aishwarya shows the anger.
Randeep Hooda should be appreciated for the looks and certain scenes but his performance also doesn’t live up to his real potential. Most of it looks so plastic. The best part of the film was Richa Chadda with some wonderful screen presence and an acting that would convince you very much. In fact how wonderful it would have been if Richa played Sarabjit’s sister. Her performance at different ages was already proven in Gangs Of Wasseypur-1 and 2. Sadly, the makers needed a star and that dumped the film to a good extent. Omung Kumar’s story telling is so old fashioned and so was the music score in some scenes. Omung Kumar has turned a potentially amazing story into a lacklusture plastic movie that completely lacks soul.
Some audio tracks in the film are very good. Editing was OK. The writing department spoilt the script to a major extent followed by the irritating acting of Aishwarya Rai Bachhan. By the way, there is a reason why Omung Kumar has been mentioned multiple times without using a pronoun in the review. The Reason is that he seems to be a self-assuming and self-obsessed maker and that clearly shows in the film.
On the whole, Sarabjit is a wonderful opportunity gone waste.
