Shamshera Review: Another shot in the dark from the have-camera-will-shoot school of moviemaking, Shamshera is a terrifying period film. Duration. When a film doesn’t work out, critics often write it off as a ‘forgotten story’.
Shamshera Review
In this case, even that euphemism is not in question. Shamshera, all action and attention to detail, no plot.
Produced by Yash Raj Films, Shamshera is an insanely bad action flick that makes the audience more oppressed than it does on the people he enslaves and brutalizes in the film. It’s the stun-gun of a movie that makes anyone chill.
After dragging the audience through two hours of extravagant garbage, it throws a mindless scuffle of a climax. We leave the theater completely stunned – and oblivious to what we saw on screen.
The screenplay, written by the film’s director Karan Malhotra in collaboration with Ekta Pathak Malhotra, features a randomly woven patchwork quilt – colourful, overwrought, garish and ugh.
Shamshera Review on IndiNews
Yes, in other words, Shamshera, set in the late 19th century, an era in which the heroine is allowed to drape in new-millennium clothing, throws a bundle of things into a cauldron that changes everything ash and dust.
In the opening minutes of the 158-minute film, in which a voiceover sets up a ‘historic’ context for the events ahead, one’s curiosity is slightly piqued as it is clear that the protagonist, for a change, is going to be a human.
One who is from the lowest level of the caste hierarchy and is, therefore, at the receiving end of discrimination. More importantly, he is not one of the liars and is determined to lead his tribe out of darkness.
But as the story (whatever it is) progresses, the film’s anti-caste stance evaporates and the battle royale turns into a feud between two men – one tormentor and one avenger.
If there was a title of badge, it would have been Shamshera. Yes, Shamshera Thugs of Hindostan is bad in level, its duration is equal to Mohenjodaro.
Shamshera Review on IndiNews
If there is anything that Shamshera proves, it is this: Bollywood, even if it is represented by its number one production banner – must either shut down history altogether or a ‘statutory’ to depict falsification.
F’ classification should be formulated when it deals with cases it does not understand.
Lead actor Ranbir Kapoor – in his first big screen appearance since 2018’s Sanju – had to endure this difficult mess twice, as well as his sons, the two men engaged, a quarter-century apart, for their freedom fight. In. The oppressed warrior tribe was deceived by an evil servant of the British Raj.
The main antagonist is essayed by Sanjay Dutt. He does a wild variation on Agneepath’s Kancha Cheena and KGF’s Adheera and dissolves into a crude caricature that poses no threat.
Due to a script that is as confusing as it is, the veteran actor, who is increasingly being typecast as an over-the-top villain, is unable to decide whether he wants to be a goofy villain and some want to laugh or play. Straight. He falls between two stools.
Shamshera embodies fake history in such a heavy-handed manner that you’d expect a treacherous Mughal general or a ruthless British officer out of the woodwork and land for the ultra-male hero to display his skills. Pamper yourself to prepare.
The Mughals are indeed mentioned, but thankfully only in passing – they are blamed for the displacement of the fictional Khmeran tribe from Rajputana – and a British colonel (played by Scottish actor Craig McGinley) arrives late in the film.
And the queen swears to instill fear in the hearts of hypocrites. As it happens, the Hindi-speaking white colonel is far less evil than the Hindustani villain.
In this completely male-dominated landscape, only two women have something to do. Iravati Hershey has been cast as Shamshera’s wife and Vaani Kapoor plays a dancer who helps Shamshera’s son Lalli carry on his father’s ax-wielding legacy.
But the two crowd out the film, as is Ronit Bose Roy, who plays a mentor to Lalli, who grew up in captivity in a fort, before setting out on the world to set the score. Learns the ropes.
For a film that has reportedly sunk ₹150 crore, the visual effects are an eyesore. The fort (one of the movie’s key locations) looks every inch like a cardboard structure, which it probably is and a train sequence deep in the second half is so difficult that it runs off the rails before it even begins. Lots of money down the drain.
What’s worse than what the film looks like is how it feels – an all-out attack on the senses. On VFX, it would be difficult to ascertain whether the birds in the film are a kettle of eagles or a slaying of crows.
It doesn’t really matter as they don’t really stick to a film that scrapes the very bottom of the barrel with details of the main prop and span components.
In a remote part of the country in the nineteenth century there is a printing press that produces a daily Hindi newspaper called Dainik Darpan (Daily Mirror) which informs the bad guy about what is happening around him. Also, the protagonist – remember he didn’t get out of prison until he was older – knows enough to write neat notes in Devanagari that cares to read.
Moral of the story for Ranbir Kapoor: The actor should read his scripts more critically before buying him from now on. The credit for this goes to his talent.
Bollywood, in the midst of an expanding lean patch, is in dire need of a change. Will Shamshera bring the audience back to the theatres? No. This is an epic-scale dude.