Film Review: Sarbjit

Once upon a time there was Sunny Deol's dhai kilo ka haath, which uprooted a hand pump to scare off the entire Pakistan Army. Today there is Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's index finger.

To be fair, Sarbjit is not the unrelenting screamfest that Gadar was, but Deol's film came to mind as the former Miss World held up her famous slender digit to intimidate an armed Pakistani security official. She did this right after delivering a loud speech to a Pakistani mob about how Pakistanis stab us Indians in the back while we bravely fight them face to face. As expected, the gun-bearing Pakistani meekly moves aside, and she proceeds to grandly walk past him as only Indian movie stars can when up against the dreaded dushman from across the border.

Sarbjit

Director: Omung Kumar

Cast: Randeep Hooda, Darshan Kumar, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Richa Chaddha

Rating: 1.5/5

   That Sarbjit favours emotional manipulation over restraint or logic is evident at several points, but one moment in particular stands out. After years of incarceration in a Pakistani jail, Sarbjit Singh is finally to be set free. We see him emerge smiling from behind the guards at the border and cross over to the Indian side. As his sister, Dalbir (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), wife, Sukhpreet (Richa Chadha) and daughters rejoice, he kisses the ground. Then, without any noticeable change of perspective, we see a different person standing where he was. The Pakistanis have released another prisoner in his place, Sarbjit’s still in prison, and the scene we’ve witnessed is a lie.

Based on the life of Sarabjit Singh, a farmer who was wrongfully convicted in Pakistan and died after a fatal assault inside jail, the movie Sarbjit focuses on his sister Dalbir Kaur’s fight against the system to prove his innocence.

However, given the very real context of the plot, the movie is an almost fictitious, drum-beating melodramatic saga that suffers from an overly-worked-up lead actor.

Applause is due for Aishwarya Rai Bachchan who plays the struggling Dalbir. But, in the same breath, the 42-year-old actor doesn’t manage to bring alive the character. Her lip-twisting, chest-thumping and shouting does not help either. Instead, the melodrama alienates us from an otherwise evocative character.

The constant harping on Indo-Pak relations – mostly about the sympathy people should show for innocent people, but at times digressing to more political and subtle anti-Pakistani sentiments – loses the plot. Simple humane moments focusing on the struggles of a family that has lost a member to an unfair system would’ve taken the movie much further.

It’s a movie, so melodrama and fiction is all right, but it does take some doing if the audience is expected to identify with characters using phrases like ‘Khauf ki badboo’ or burning their own effigies. Or accept the Pakistani advocate who faces attack for supporting Sarbjit (played by Randeep Hooda) and decides to join the violent crowd protesting against him! Because, apparently nobody knows what he looks like.

Randeep as Sarabjit evokes pity and sympathy. He is sweet as the brother and brings a smile on our face when he is with his family. The movie would have been much better, had director Omung Kumar given Randeep a little more space. The few sequences where we do see him make us teary-eyed, but the movie quickly moves on.

One of the rare engaging scenes is where Sarbjit’s family goes to meet him in jail. The frisking of the women in his family is disturbing and also offers a moment where Aishwarya looks authentic in the movie.

Richa Chaddha, yet another talented actor wasted in this star-driven plot, leaves her mark as the silent wife who painfully waits for her husband.