Director: Abhijeet Mohan Warang Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Namashi Chakraborty, Amit Sadh, Sameera Reddy, Nitu Chandra, Tridha Choudhury, Mrinal Kulkarni, Harsimran Oberoi Where: In theatres Rating: 2/5
This week’s release is a political thriller Aakhri Sawal, a film that promises to fearlessly deep dive into India’s most debated historical conspiracies. Will this film turn out to be a justifying reply to many unspoken and unasked questions or will it pose as a big question mark at the box office is what we will be finding out.The film starts off in Kerala’s Palakkad area, post which we are then ‘made to witness’ an argument between Vicky Hegde (Namashi Chakraborty) and Professor Nadkarni (Sanjay Dutt), because the latter had stopped the former’s thesis on RSS. Amid this, Vicky promises to unmask many facts about RSS which had been so far kept under the wraps.
When the argument escalates in magnitude, Vicky tells Prof Nadkarni that he will withdraw his argument provided he answers his five questions. Just as when Prof Nadkarni is replying one by one, enters Prof. Pallavi Menon (Sameera Redddy), who, with the help of her TV journalist friend, transforms it into a televised event. What are the five questions that Vicky asks Prof Nadkarni and does the latter give satisfactory answers to them and is Vicky Hegde more than what meets the eye is what gets revealed as the film progresses. Actors’ performanceNo prizes for guessing that this is an out and out Sanjay Dutt film all the way. Sanjay, who recently delivered double whammy with Dhurandhar 2 and Raja Shivaji, tries his best to underplay the persona that he is best known for, while providing the authoritative gravitas to a script that balances academic inquiry with drama in order to do justice to the film’s intense ideological conflict. Amid all this, one definitely will miss his trademark acting prowl for sure. Namashi Chakraborty tries his best but struggles visibly to live upto his role, which required more punch and salt. Ditto and more for Sameera Reddy who carries almost the same expression throughout the film. Rest of the cast (Amit Sadh, Nitu Chandra, Tridha Choudhury, Mrinal Kulkarni, Harsimran Oberoi) try to blend with the narrative and help in carrying the film forward. Direction, Music and AestheticsWhen dealing with hard hitting real life topics, one needs to be extremely careful about the thin line which divides the facts from cinematic liberties. And the film’s director Abhijeet Mohan Warang, in an attempt to do justice to this, lands up making a convoluted film, whose unjustifiable sequences take the steam off the audiences’ interest. There are many places where the film starts dangling with its screenplay (Utkarsh Naithani- who has also written the story and dialogues). Speaking of dialogues, with a film of this stature, where dialogues and one liners are expected to be hard hitting, the film clearly lacks them (barring a handful). The film’s music (Monty Sharma) is average and does not have any hook track. The background score (Onkar Tikale) is decent and thankfully, does not stick out like a sore thumb. The film’s cinematography (Stanley Mudda) is decent, if not outstanding. The film suffers majorly in the editing (Sanjay Sankla) department. FPJ Verdict Adding to the lack of buzz and publicity, even the fans of Sanjay Dutt will be sorely disappointed as they will miss his trademark ‘Baba-isms’. As for our opinion about the film, watch it only if you want to. The rest is understood.