Politics (2010)

When the American-educated scion of a powerful Indian family returns to the subcontinent, his first taste of power starts him down a corrupt path.

Director:

Prakash Jha

Writers:

Prakash Jha, Anjum Rajabali

Stars:

Ranbir Kapoor, Ajay Devgn, Nana Patekar

7 wins & 22 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Ranbir Kapoor	...	Samar Pratap
Ajay Devgn	...	Sooraj Kumar
Nana Patekar	...	Brij Gopal
Katrina Kaif	...	Indu R. Sakseria / Indu P. Pratap
Arjun Rampal	...	Prithviraj 'Prithvi' C. Pratap
Manoj Bajpayee	...	Veerendra 'Veeru' B. Pratap (as Manoj Bajpai)
Naseeruddin Shah	...	Bhaskar Sanyal
Sarah Thompson	...	Sarah Jean Collins
Nikhila Trikha	...	Bharati R. Rai / Bharati C. Pratap
Darshan Jariwala	...	Ramnath Rai
Shruti Seth	...	Rashtrawadi Party Worker
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Vinay Apte	...	Babulal
Singh Bhupesh	...	Krishna
Barkha Bisht	...	Dancer
Dhananjay Galani

Storyline

Belonging to a prominent Uttar Pradesh-family of ruthless politicians, Samar Pratap is about to return to his Irish-American girlfriend, Sarah, in the U.S. and obtain a PhD, but cancels his trip when his father, Chandra, is shot dead. He decides to stay put and avenge this slaying but ends up dealing with aspiring politician, Indu Sakseria, who wants to wed him; his brother, Prithviraj, who has been granted control of the Rashtrawadi Party but is facing imprisonment on charges of Assaulting a Police Officer and Sexual Molestation; his cousin, Veerendra, who wants control of the party; and his astute maternal uncle, Brij Gopal - who secretly controls the entire family. Before he could even handle these situations, Sarah arrives in India and will soon accuse him of being a manipulative and conniving politician.

---

Plot Keywords:

man wears eyeglasses | political advisor | illegitimate son | false accusation of rape | dysfunctional family | 

---

Taglines:

Politics...and Beyond

---

Genres:

Crime | Drama | Thriller

---

Certificate:

Not Rated

Did You Know?

Trivia

The promotions mostly were on Ranbhir and Katrina, Ajay Devgn apparently wasnt happy with his role and walked out of Arakshan but worked in Satyagraha.

---

Goofs

In the hospital where the defibrillator paddles are being used, others are still touching the patient.

---

Alternate Versions

The UK release was cut, the distributor chose to make cuts to remove scenes of strong violence and injury detail in order to obtain a 12A classification. An uncut 15 classification was available.

---

Connections

Featured in 56th Filmfare Awards (2011)

---

Soundtracks

Ishq Barse - Club Mix
Written by Swanand Kirkire
Composed by Shantanu Moitra
Performed by Pranab Biswas, Hamsika Iyer and Swanand Kirkire
Courtesy of Sony Music India

User Reviews

Prakash Jha's attempt at Polymorphism!

First of all let me clear it out, I personally hate politics and am a novice in it but after watching this movie I concluded few things:

1) All politicians are murderers.

2) People switch their present or future life partners with others in order to gain votes or money to gain votes.

3) Police is just like dice for politicians. They throw and spin them against each other for their own benefits.

4) There is no term like family or sibling in politics. Anyone can turn against anyone or may be kill each other just for greed of votes.

5) Public is a complete moron; people vote for that person who gives them a cunning speech and not to that person who genuinely wants good for them.

6) There are no human beings in politics, just a bunch of 'escaped-from-hell' devils fighting against each other to attain powers not for using for benefit of public but for personal greediness.

I am not sure whether the things I concluded are correct but you will sense trueness in them once you watch this movie. Prakash Jha( Mrityudand, GangaJal and Apaharan), famous for making movies on serious topics and getting success for every film, fails this time. All his previous movies worked because he stuck to the main story till the end and the lead actor did justice with his role. But, in Raajneeti he did a different thing, he assembled a huge star cast with every actor having a potential of pulling of any movie well and a strong topic: politics, which was great but he didn't give preference to MAIN story this time which went wrong.

Raajneeti is supposedly based on the epic Mahabharata in which brothers went for a long brutal war against each other because of their personal differences. Thus, with so many characters in the movie it was impossible for any director to present two stories simultaneously: Politics and a family war. Prakash Jha had so much scope of showing the inside story of the dirty politics going on in the country, people would have been satisfied with that but we all know there very few politicians who come from the same family or may be there is no one. So, instead of showing the movie on politics Prakash Jha ended up making a movie in which a group of brothers play conspiracies against each other to become the group leader.

I am not indicating that Raajneeti was a complete failure. It made huge impacts many times. The positives were fine performances by the actors. Ranbir Kapoor, Manoj Bajpai, Katrina Kaif and Arjun Rampal deserve special accolades for their performances. Naseeruddin Shah had nothing to do in the movie. Ajay Devgn too had little scope in comparison to others but he did his job well. Nana Patekar was OK. Sarah Thomson was good.

As I told storyline would have been much better if Prakash Jha and Anjum Rajabali stuck only to the politics. Music by Wayne Sharpe went unnoticed except for the song Mora Piya which was played a few times in the background. Editing was poor, the movie could easily have been cut short by thirty minutes which didn't happen the movie so gave the audiences many chances of yawning and checking their watches.

To conclude I would say the difference lies in Prakash Jha's earlier successful movies and Raajneeti is that the previous movies were made with an intention of presenting the audiences with reality and Raajneeti was only made with intention of scoring big at the box office. The film had so many brilliant actors that Prakash Jha didn't do full justice with everyone, he wanted to include everything in his movie: romance, suspense, and some scenes which were completely unexpected and unwanted.

I know you will watch this film, so there is no point of saying anything on this but yeah this film has its moments which will remind you of old Prakash Jha. That's why I say he didn't go for politics, he went for polymorphism!

My Rating: 6/10

Thanks & Regards

Details

Official Sites:

Facebook fan page Official site

Country:

India

Language:

Hindi English

Release Date:

4 June 2010 (India)

Also Known As:

Politics

Filming Locations:

Bhopal, India

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$850,244, 6 June 2010

Gross USA:

$1,514,558

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$29,459,596

Company Credits

Production Co:

Prakash Jha Productions, UTV Motion Pictures, Walkwater Media

Technical Specs

Runtime:

163 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color