I am not sure how bad or good is the news: India Ranks 94th among 176 countries in Corruption! Not sure who is the first one but sure am pitying the state of that country … I mean if we are suffering so much even on 94th ranking, which country can bear the crown of being No. 1
No prizes for guessing why am I talking about corruption – the movie, Satyagraha, is all about corruption and revolution against it by the Aam Aadmi. Yes, you have heard about it before, you have seen it before, you have even experienced it before (Thanks to Shree Anna & Arvind) … but when Prakash Jha tells a story, it makes a dent that’s lasts longer. The movie is heroic, hard-hitting and melodramatic at many instances (at times overdose). It still manages not to bore you, possibly simply because of the topic that it deals with. The movie is Heroic because you have always ONLY dreamt of bringing a revolution that changes everything about the bad, pathetic, ugly SYSTEM that prevails in Indian Politics. Politics? Isn’t that a cuss word now? Am I exaggerating? No! How many of us really want to get in, or deal with Politics? Who wants to get their hands dirty? But here is a guy who leaves his thousands of crores to pick a broom for cleaning the so-called system. The movie is Hard-Hitting even when you know it all – our SYSTEM is such it will never change (or have we given up?). It’s melodramatic and that’s why it hits even more. All said and done, it’s definitely worth watching.
An Engineer dies (presumably murdered), wife (Amrita) & Father (Big struggles to get the Government declared compensation and for some reason, Big B lands up in Jail. Ajay, childhood friend of Engineer, pledges to help the family. While he starts off only to get Big B out of jail, a series of events makes him revolt against the System. He leaves his Billion Dollar Company (just like that?) and starts a revolution to ‘correct’ the problem. With him joins a journalist (Kareena) and a local leader (Arjun). The story moves ahead, bends, twists, hits … Do they win? No, no, don’t jump the guns – watch the movie.
Except the but-obvious acting of Big B, AD and Manoj, all are average performers. Many ‘likes’ to them and a couple of ‘unlikes’ to Director for not being able to give right placements to Arjun & Kareena. The script doesn’t have much space for them. Though 50% of viewers will disagree, the movie survives a huge disaster towards the end only because it shows the reality: it takes too much to change a System and it’s a slow process. And there is no end. Presumably.
Overall, 3.5 shors to Satyagraha.
