Varun Chaudhary
When posters of the film carry not the face of the actor playing the titular character but the star backing the project, you know exactly what you will get.'Sarbjit' , based on the story of a man incarcerated in a Pakistani jail for over two decades, while his sister fought a dogged battle for his release, opts for high-pitched saccharine-laden melodrama : the star is equally high-pitched, leaving the actor to bring up the rear.Sarbjit's story has been well-documented. He lived with his family—old father, wife Sukh ( Chaddha), and fiercely loyal sister Dalbir ( Rai) in a Punjab village close to the Indo-Pak border. He strayed over the line one night, and was nabbed by the Pakistani patrol. That's when his ordeal started—thrown in a box for months, limbs contorted, hung upside down and flayed till bloody, till he was forced into a false confession, and jailed.The devastated Dalbir , ever protective about her 'bhai', takes up cudgels on his behalf. And she keeps going through the long and hard grind : her appeals to officials on either side of the border fall mostly on deaf ears, with only a few light-in-the-tunnel moments.There is heft in the story. The horror of a human forced to suffer physical and mental torture, and used as a political pawn between India and Pakistan and their see-sawing relations, is wrenching. The family is caught in a terrible cleft, neither able to forget, nor properly mourn. But the treatment is cloying and sentimental, and manipulates you into weeping without actually feeling.A real-life tale which is inherently so full of drama and heart-break has no need to be artificially revved up. But mainstream Bollywood doesn't know any other way to do things. 'Sarabjit' should have been called 'Dalbir', because it is Aishwarya doing all the heavy-lifting, but to distressing little impact.First off, she is all wrong for the part, her attempts at the rural Punjabi accent slipping up every so often. And then she goes full tilt at her lines, ratcheting up the volume, to such an extent that you want to tell her to hush. When she does go silent, even if precisely for two and a half scenes, she is able to convey her pain and anguish so much better. If she had modulated her act, 'Sarbjit' would have been a better film.And of course there is the superfluous 'giddha-shiddha' : when will Bollywood make a film on Punjabi characters minus this cliché ? Richa Chaddha hovers mostly in the background, with only one or two scenes which she owns. One noble Pakistani shows up, in the shape of a lawyer ( Darshan), who believes that Sarbjit is innocent. The rest is taken over by Ms Rai, straining every sinew, delivering loud lectures to both Indians and Pakistanis, and, heaven help us, Talibanis.I did tear up a couple of times, but only for Sarbjit. Randeep Hooda is mostly shown inside his dark, fetid cell, his hair filthy, his hands gnarled. He nails the look and the accent, letting neither overpower him, and is the only reason to sit through this sagging saga.
thepyratror
The least you can expect from a biography made by a former Production Designer is a sense of authenticity. The film has a complete lack of authenticity, be it production design or a sense of the age. Add that to the film having no sense of progression of time. The time has been marked by people stating it has been 10 years or 3 years or some other thing.To start with, the film takes a non-linear approach, so that in the beginning when we see Aishwarya Rai and Richa Chaddha crying, we feel no sense of sympathy for them because we have not seen their relationship with Randeep Hooda. After that we go into Aishwarya Rai's traumatic past to create a connection with her, in a manner which is very melodramatic and over the top. Randeep Hooda's capture is very unconvincing, and you never feel the time as it would have been felt by a person living in solitary confinement for years. The madness in his performance is also very inconsistent. His performance is good but hampered by the inconsistency. Aishwarya Rai's performance is over the top and does not evoke anything, it is the sort of performance we have come to expect from her. Richa Chaddha has not been utilized properly as she has to convey all her emotions through staring. Also hampering the narrative are the songs, none of them good and always trying to evoke something different from what is actually happening in the film. One of the worst biopics made in India.
Mihir Gupta
We were confused between X-Men and Sarbjit, my friend don't like both the genres. So we decided that we will ask the ticket vendor. Fortunately, we got tickets of this movie and that too in the topmost row. The movie is good. Being a Punjabi, I didn't like the Punjabi used in the movie. Randeep Hooda has done justice to the character. Aishwarya is not meant for such roles, though her acting was good. There is a scene, where Sarbjit meet his family after so many years, for me that was the best and the most emotional scene of the movie. One last thing i want to say that such movies should not be made because it sends a wrong signal to the youth and also the uneducated sector about the Pakistan.
