Sarkar 3 (2017) Review!!!!

Synopsis – The third film in Ram Gopal Varma’s Sarkar trilogy, which chronicles the exploits of a powerful political figure.

My Take – A film tag lined – directed by Ram Gopal Varma used to mean something before. If there’s anything that defined maverick filmmaker’s directing career, which includes films like Shiva, Rangeela, Daud, Satya, Kaun, Mast, Jungle, Company & Bhoot among others, it was his unpredictability. No matter how good or bad each film was there was no guessing what he was going to do next, it’s what made him one of the most exciting filmmakers in the late 90s up until the mid 2000s. Nearly 12 years ago RGV signed on the then in demand Bachchan father & son duo for his take on Francis Ford Cappola‘s Godfather and the result was excellent, both critically and financially. Unfortunately, this nine years late follow up to his last financially successful film is yet another lazy attempt by a now creatively bankrupt director to revive his career. This film shall also mark the death of Varma’s most marked feature, that very unpredictability we had grown to love, that you mourn more than any of the dozen or so characters who’re gruesomely gunned down on screen. Yet, what I find fascinating about this one, despite non organic follow-up feel, is that it’s been over a decade and some, and Amitabh Bachchan genuinely appears frozen in time through it all and looks just as quietly determined on screen, somber, thoughtful, loud, reactive, and at no moment, bored or disinterested, the true king. The story follows Subhas Nagre aka Sarkar (Amitabh Bachchan), who despite the loss of both his sons Shankar (Abhishek Bachchan) and Vishnu (Kay Kay Menon), still remains a figure both respected and feared, a mere wave of his hand can still make thousands of people go crazy. With his wife Pushpa (Supriya Pathak) sick and bed-ridden, Sarkar is pretty much the last man standing, or rather sitting in his drawing room sofa pouring his tea on a plate sipping it with relish. However, things begin to take a darn turn again when Nagre’s now grown-up estranged grandson Shivaji (Amit Sadh), who seems more inclined towards his father Vishnu’s violent tendencies than his uncle’s cordial approach, returns home to join the family business and clashes with the Sarkar’s long-serving right-hand man Gokul (Ronit Roy).

On the parallel side, the political and corporate diasporas once again begin to pose threat to Sarkar’s dominance as new enemies in the form of Michael Vallya (Jackie Shroff), a Dubai-based millionaire, Gandhi (Bajrangbali Singh), his shady right hand business partner, Govind Deshpande (Manoj Bajpai), moody local politician with an old connection to Sarkar and Shivaji’s girlfriend Annu Karkare (Yami Gautam), who is seeking revenge for the death of her father. Everyone has their own agenda to take out Sarkar and take over his position. We have the usual double crossings, conspiracies and twists and every single one of which is entirely predictable. The trailer of the third installment promised Sarkar to be angrier than ever, so I naturally assumed that the film would be three times furious at least. But it’s nothing like that. It feels like an old wine in a new bottle as whatever had to be exploited from the story of Nagre family has been done. At this point, no one matches the wave length of Bachchan to be able to give him a neck to neck competition. Not even the ones he is at war with, we know the outcome and that’s not thrilling at all. Weak characterization is the biggest let down of this film, followed by the weak screenplay which does not manage to. In comparison to its predecessors and this sequel doesn’t carry the film to next level. The first 50 minutes of the film tries its best to keep you hooked, but you start getting restless post the interval. The story has various unwanted and unwarranted scenes and the story is so predictable that nothing surprises you. The film would’ve been a far more engaging watch had Varma focused on this aspect of his lead character—a brooding, ageing, tragic anti-hero figure refusing to give up so and stick to his principle: of doing the right thing without the care of the law. It would have been a natural progression from the first two films which saw The Godfather-like Sarkar at the peak of his powers and the inevitable disintegration of his family. You might wish to dig deeper. But between Sarkar’s long glances; dark, excessively moody, pretentious lighting in this flick that’s totally ‘indoorsy’ to the point of being claustrophobic, what you get is a wholly de-humanized view of the world, and a five-people economy, where people simply drop dead like pins, making you wonder if killing itself was so easy then what was the point of politicking in the first place. We also get repeated close-ups of a life size model of a bull-dog (signifying, perhaps, loyalty), which looks like a gargoyle in the flashes of lightning that enters from the window on a rainy night. It could’ve still worked had Varma exercised the control over the medium he used to have. Here scenes don’t segue into the next and menacing lines sound comical; when Gandhi wants to threaten Sarkar, he tells him, ‘Love you’ and the Sadh character, at one point, declares, ‘I’m the king of lions. ‘Yet for all his much-vaunted influence, Nagre is highly vulnerable to attack – a scripting flaw that cannot be mistaken for astute plotting. The culprit is ultimately not any of Sarkar’s arch-enemies but the filmmaker’s famed cynicism at the political class and the institutions that hold society together. Varma’s dismissal of due process, of the legitimacy of elected representatives and the law and order machinery and people driven by political ideology, reaches peak optimization in this film. In the director’s pessimistic worldview, everybody is a sellout, including Manoj Bajpayee’s secretly corrupt political activist, and Subhash Nagre alone is worthy of respect and emulation.

RGV tries to instill novelty into the script with a clever twist in the climax, but the problem is the script loopholes that show it to be more of a face-saving dramatic device rather than (as per what is shown) something really logical. The ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ finally make us want to question many things that happen, and which no one bothers to explain. For example, how does Shivaji know what Gokul is up to? And vice-versa? Why was Deshpande bumped off? And by whom? What was the need for Sarkar’s final discussion with his wife about Shivaji? However, there are occasional flashes of the talented filmmaker we once knew. You’ll spot it in a handsomely mounted Ganesh aarti sequence and the scene that immediately follows, also Varma and his cameraman Amol Rathod find interesting ways to use the bustling city as a canvas against which the drama unfolds, this is an intrinsically Mumbai film and they exploit the varied landscape shrewdly. Plus the filmmaker steers clear of the sickening violence that is his hallmark in his underworld and crime sagas, but that is small consolation. As a writer P. Jaya Kumar seems to have forgotten the basics; that for any protagonist to rise, the antagonist’s character needs to be strong and convincing. Since it is hard to take the film seriously, relief comes in the form of a track that revels in its randomness. It has Jackie Shroff, in his most entertaining turn since his polio retake video. For most of his screen-time, he is chilling by terrace-top swimming pools in what looks like Dubai with a dumb-blonde arm-candy and saying things like “The problem with laddoo is that it is too sweet.” Songs in any Bollywood film are to add to the atmosphere of the film or raise a certain amount of tension, but in this train wreck, all the background music does is gets on your nerves. You have a few different versions of ‘Govinda Govinda’ playing in the background after every alternate scene or ‘Saam Daam, Dand, Bhed’ playing on loop, it just gets irritating after a while. However, the main problem is the character of Shivaji, who needed to be fleshed out more, needed much more punch in the persona itself and (again if a fourth film can be planned) be solid enough to carry off the film on his shoulder and talent. RGV’s first faux pas is that he selects a weak actor to play the role. Amit Sadh tries his best, but we can see that the raw material itself lacks spark. Or did RGV know this franchise would end here? After all, there are strong(er) young actors around. Amit Sadh is fast becoming the new-age Vivek Oberoi – he huffs and puffs, breathes fire and chooses the corniest of roles. Here, he has the predetermined gait of an actor who is only trying to fulfill his life-long dream of working with Bachchan and the chap who made Satya. His career will kick the bucket soon if he continues to pursue bucket-list dreams like this one. As far as the other actors go, do you fault a Manoj Bajpayee or Jackie Shroff? Despite their limited screen time, they are top notch. Ronit Roy is also adequately evil; his outburst scene with Bachchan is one stellar show. Yami Gautam has nothing to do in what she claimed was one of her meatiest parts. Her scene with Bachchan, oddly enough, is mentioned but never shown! Rohini Hattangadi & Supriya Pathak weren’t required to do much as per the material at hand. Expectedly Amitabh Bachchan commands the screen as the imposing protagonist. There is nothing that can go wrong when it comes to Big B‘s acting. The man knows how to inhabit a character and play it effortlessly. Banking solely on the gravitas of Bachchan, Ramu mounts the film – his silences are haunting, his words are lethal and truly that’s the best part about this film, while everything else struggles. On the whole, ‘Sarkar 3’ is a tedious and tepid film which despite Amitabh Bachchan‘s performance is letdown by its overwhelming sense of repetition.