Eklavya: Review

Eklavya – The Royal Guard

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Saif Ali khan, Boman Irani, Jackie Shroff, Jimmy Shergill, Vidya Balan, Raima Sen, Sharmila Tagore and Sanjay Dutt

Eklavya is one more movie coming from the stables of Vidhu Vinod Chopra and it really deserves to be called one of the finest crafted movies in recent times. Having roped in a heavy starcast with the VC Banner regulars like Sanjay Dutt, Saif Ali Khan and Vidya Balan, et. al. as well as getting Amitabh Bachchan to work with him for the first time, he does bring out the best of all of them to narrate a story which took 5 years to write and was equally difficult to portray.

More importantly he does not stretch the movie for the sake of it and keeps it as short as less than two hours with just one nominal song in the movie. The direction is impeccable to say the least. Some of the scenes especially the ones where Amitabh blindly separates the ghungroo from the pigeon, the scene where the camels cross across with the fast moving train in the background among others leave you just spell bound.

The story essentially portrays one of the Royal families in Rajasthan with no more dynasty and the secret behind how the lady of the family takes the help of their guard (Eklavya) to give birth to the next generation of the family. The revealing of this secret just before her death brings about a feeling of being cheated to her husband and sows the seeds of taking revenge for it. The director has shown great detail of creativity to create a scene as to how the secret is revealed to her son by the way of a painting by his twin sister (Raima Sen) who is mentally retarded by birth. And then starts the entire plot of how Eklavya keeps up the fight to keep up his duty of protecting the Royal family which otherwise would have resulted in ill-effects for the next few generations in his family.

Amitabh Bachchan comes up with and delivers one of the splendid performances till date. So much so that never in the movie would you feel that he is someone greater than the servant of the royal family. Saif is pretty neat in his role with lots of glimpses and shadows from his erstwhile Parineeta and so is the case with Vidya Balan too. Sanjay Dutt does a cameo in his short and sweet role of a policeman while the others (Boman Irani, Jackie Shroff, Raima Sen and Jimmy Shergill) don’t disappoint either in their tits and bits roles which bind up the plots.

Verdict: A combination of good talent putting up a great performance all together. Can there be any other reason for not watching the movie. Definitely a one time watch. (Though the subject of the movie is such that it cannot expect repeat audiences)Photo Courtesy: IndiaFM

Salaam-E-Ishq: Review

Salaam-E-Ishq: Review

Cast: Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Govinda, Akshay Khanna, Ayesha Takia, Sohail Khan, Isha Koppikar, John Abraham, Vidya Balan, Anil Kapoor, Juhi Chawla

Director: Nikhil Advani

Twelve People. Six Love Stories. One Problem. Love.

And more problems for the audience. That sums up all the movie is all about. Four hours… yes you got it correct… Four Hours of absolute torture and pure non-sense.

In the quest of making an out of box movie with a high profile multi-starrer cast, the director forgets to give the movie any sort of life or rather any sort of story even to begin with. In the first 15 minutes itself, you come to know that the movie is an absolute crap. And you wasted your hard earned money, and more importantly 4 precious hours of your life.

The absence of any sort of Story in the first place makes you feel whether the producer of the movie forgot to pay the writer. The Director, Nikhil Advani, wanted to bank on the success of his previous venture with Kal Ho Na Ho. But he rather forgot that he had to put in some efforts to make a movie which people would at least like to see in entirety. And regarding the Music of the movie, there is not a single song other than the title song which you would even like to hear once.

And the movie does more harm than any gain for seasoned actors like Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra, John Abraham, Anil Kapoor and Juhi Chawla. The scenes with Sohail Khan and Isha Koppikar seemed quite interesting with the former getting to desperate to have the after marriage activities with his wife, but things not working each time. Only Akshaye Khanna and Ayesha Takia have something to take away from this movie with some meaningful roles and enough time on-screen and both justifying it with their acting skills.

Verdict:
- If you don’t want to waste 4 hours of your precious life, better not watch it.
- If you want to waste 4 hours of your precious life, then too better not watch it as there are better thing to waste time on.