Review for SHERSHAAH:
•Language: HINDI
•Duration: 02 Hours 15 Minutes.
•Genre: BIOGRAPHICAL WAR DRAMA.
•Release Date: 12th August 2021
• STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEOS.
• REVIEW BY ARUNJYOTHI.R.VALIYAVEETIL.
•POSITIVES:
1: Direction.
2: Story and Screenplay.
3: Performance of actors.
4: Cinematography.
5: Editing.
6: Music and Background Score.
7: Actions and Stunts.
•NEGATIVES:
1: Contains regular army movie cliches.
2: Romance lacks depth.
3: Subplots felt lagging.
4: Average Dialogues
•ONE WORD: AN ENGAGING FIGHT FOR THE NATION.
•STORY IDEA:
The story starts with Vikram Batra (Sidharth Malhotra) the son of a school teacher who dreams to become a soldier to serve his county. He falls in love with Dimpal and decides to marry but her father rejects and decides to get her daughter married to someone but she still sticks with the love of Vikram. Soon Vikram joins the army and leads many fights and won many hearts of his senior officers and colleagues. After a successful commanding operation, he leaves home to spend his vacation with his family and Dimple but things get upside down when the Pakistani army bunked Indian many territories leading to the Kargil War. Soon Vikram leaves and joins the army to fight against them, will be and his battalion can defeat Pakistani armies is the rest of the story.
•DETAILED REVIEW:
Shershaah is directed by the Tamil filmmaker Vishnu Vardhan who had previously given the hits like Billa, Arrambam, and Pattiyal and the writings are done by Sandeep Srivastava. The movie is produced by Hiroo Yash Johar, Karan Johar, Apoorva Mehta, Shabbir Boxwala, Ajay Shah and Himanshu Gandhi. The cinematography is by Kamaljeet Negi and editing is made by A. Sreekar Prasad. The movie comes under the production of Dharma Productions and Kaash Entertainment and the movie is currently streaming through Amazon Prime Videos.
Vishnu Varadhan’s movies always have the content to get cherish and the package of engaging materials he used to build in his making is something worth our time. So as his first Bollywood film he followed his pattern and made Shershaah one of the gripping and thrilling military movies of recent times. What all elements that we can expect from an army movie is filled in Shershaah with many good compelling moments. The making was amazing, the war and the commitments of our dedicated army officer were bewildering all over the movie and those were exciting to watch. Vishnu Varadhan was having the right clear ideas and thoughts on how to make a war film that is inspired by a real-life hero, so he had perfectly blended the real-life scenarios with his making style which had resulted positively. The making from Vishnu Varadhan was interesting, he starts with the movie with the climax which hinting us that more and more cherishing things are yet to come and on the other hand the narration from one of the twin brothers characters gives it more space to relate to the ongoing scenarios.
The story, screenplay, and dialogues were written by Sandeep Srivastava, the writings were good but not great. The things I liked in the writing is the story and screenplay, inspired by the life of Vikram Batra and by the events of the Kargil War the writer here makes a combined job by mixing all these. So the life of Vikram Batra combing with his personal life and his contributions to the Indian Army gives the viewers a clear idea to connect with his spirit. How did he live, what he does, what he faced, and finally how does he sacrifice himself for the country is written out excellently. The screenplay was also promising, there are enough moments of war and fight of army officials to feel proud unfortunately at certain points things lack depth. The bringing out of emotions was well written, the screenplay was having the different emotions of fight, survival, justice, sorrow, betrayal, love, parenthood, brotherhood, and trust, so these kinds of emotions were neatly written out and passed to the right characters. The war scenes made in the screenplay is the highlight, the entire fights between two military groups were thrilling till the end. As a military war movie the element of patriotism lies down everywhere and certain scenes give us goosebumps and reminding the hard work and sacrifices they use to face to protect us and our country.
The problem with the writings is the regular cliches which we can see in every war movie. The in-between flashbacks make the viewing dull, the usual pattern of heroes defeating the villains and heroes romance, etc were all repeated in the writing of Shershaah. As a biographical movie, the life of the protagonist needs to apprehend bit still the way of showing it was following the regular style and typical methods. The subplot of romance between the central character and heroine was giving the feelings of lag and the chemistry happening between them was not having the real romantic depth. Looking into the dialogues also the impact was less, as a war film the dialogues must be powerful to pass the kick and smash but sadly the dialogues were felt normal, a kind of amusing or influencing words were missing from the central characters. For example, the film The URI: The Surgical Strike was rich with many powerful dialogues but in Shershaah those impact on words was not able to see.
Looking into the performance, Sidharth Malhotra as Captain Vikram Batra & his brother Vishal Batra shines as a brilliant military officer. The whole performance was superlative with his incredible acting and terrific actions. The war scenes were authentically handled by him and the qualities of a daring military officer were perfectly seen on him. The dialogue delivery and its timing were flawless also the aggression he expressed to kill the enemies was fascinating also the few emotional scenes were genuine according to the scenes. The pairing and combination scenes with Kaira Advani were normal which was moderate. Kiara Advani as Dimple Cheema, Vikram Batra’s fiancé did a notable performance. The chemistry between Sidharth and Kaira was not that great but still, some look good and were watchable. Shiv Pandit as Captain Sanjeev Jamwal did good and his combination scene with Sidharth was highlighting especially when it comes to war scenes. Raj Arun as Subedar Raghunath Singh and Nikitin Dheer as Major Ajay Singh Jasrotia aka Jassi did excellent supporting roles, both of their scenes with Sidharth were great with some good emotional scenes. Himmanshoo A. Malhotra as Major Rajeev Kapoor and Anil Charanjeett as Naib Subedar Bansi Lal Sharma did complete justice to their respective characters.
The technical side makes this movie more beautiful especially the cinematography and music. The cinematography by Kamaljeet Negi was outstanding, with no words to describe after seeing his beautiful frames and extraordinary camera movements. The camera movements he used to capture the action scenes and war scenes were magical, the right mannerism to give the proper impact was seen this his work. There are many frames especially the wide-angle shots of the war and the preparations of army officials. The battlefield was taken faultlessly and the lighting methods he used in indoor scenes were also captivating. The editing of A. Sreekar Prasad was powerful as usual with the perfect cuts and the detailed work on coloring was attractive, also none of the scenes hasn’t given any kind of mismatches. The background score tuned by John Stewart Eduri was spelling with the right mood to maintain the film. The background score at the war scenes was perfectly matching to set the scenarios. The tracks were also melodious especially the romantic track “Raataan Lambiyan” sung by Jubin Nautiyal and Asees Kaur. Tanishk Bagchi tunes were flowing with the mood of love. The song “Ranjha” sung by Jasleen Royal and B Praak was melodious and the lyrics by Anvita Dutt were strong. “Mann Bharrya 2.0″ by B Praak and Jaani with the vocals of B Praak was sentimental and both the visuals and song were heartbreaking. Special mention to the whole team behind the action sequences and behind the wat scenes, they made remarkable hard work and the result was wonderful to a great extent.
•CONCLUSION:
So overall Shershaah is a good biographical war drama with many wonderful moments and the life of Vikram Batra is something that can inspire anyone. The clear-cut directions from Vishnu Varadhan and the performance of Sidharth Malhotra make Shershaah worth our time. Therefore to conclude, the movie had satisfied me and won’t disappoint anyone, watch it for the daring officer Vikram Batra also for the Kargil events.
•VERDICT: WORTH WATCH
•RATING: 3.5/5
