{"id":808,"date":"2005-07-22T06:18:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-22T06:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/2005\/07\/review-viruddh-2.html"},"modified":"2023-01-24T02:05:39","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T07:05:39","slug":"review-viruddh-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/2005\/07\/review-viruddh-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Review : Viruddh"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\" Rating : Above Average (3.3\/5)<\/span>
\n Genre : Drama<\/span>
\n Year : 2005<\/span>
\n Running time : 2 hrs and 31 minutes<\/span>
\n Director : Mahesh Manjrekar<\/span>
\n Cast : Amitabh Bachhan, Sharmila Tagore, John Abraham, Sanjay Dut<\/span>t, Sachin Khedekar, Anusha Dandekar, Prem Chopra, Shivaji Satyam<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

VIRUDDH : Powerful notion, weak execution<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Viruddh is the story of an aged couple fighting against (hence the name) the cor<\/span>rupt system to clear their dead son’s name. The story is strong and held much po<\/span>tential, until it was watered down into regular, old, soppy Hindi cinema. Manjre<\/span>kar, the director of such outstanding films as “Astitva”, and “Vaastav”, lets us<\/span> down this time.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Vidyadhar Patwardhan (Bachhan) is a retired employee of Air-India, and lives wit<\/span>h his wife Sumitra (Tagore) in their home in Bombay. Their son Amar (Abraham) is<\/span> studying in London, and hasn’t been home for 2 years. He plans to come home for<\/span> his birthday, and the parents are delighted, and look forward to seeing him. Am<\/span>ar does come home, bringing with him his live-in Britsh-Indian girlfriend Jenny <\/span>(Dandekar). After the initial rebuke by Sumi, both Amar and Jenny are welcomed w<\/span>armly. There is more cause for happiness and celebration when Sumi and Vidyadhar<\/span> get Amar and Jenny married.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Planning secretly for Amar’s upcoming birthday, Sumi, Vidyadhar, and Jenny consp<\/span>ire to get Amar out of the house, by sending him to a friend’s party alone. At t<\/span>he friend’s party, Amar witnesses a shooting incident, and is also shot when he <\/span>tries to prevent the assailant from escaping. Amar dies in the hospital. Sumi, V<\/span>idyadhar and Jenny are incoherent with grief. But there is more to come. It appe<\/span>ars that the assailant was the son of the Chief Minister, and to protect him, th<\/span>e police fabricate a story about Amar and Jenny being drug-pushers, and plant ev<\/span>idence in their home. They arrest Jenny, and malign Amar in court, through bribed<\/span> witnesses and false alibis for the CM’s son. Sumi and Vidyadhar lose their case <\/span><\/strong>in court, but refuse to accept defeat …..<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Viruddh is the story of their fight for justice.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

All actors have done a good job. Amitabh and Sharmila, seen together on-screen a<\/span>fter many decades, mouth their dialogues with natural ease. And even Abraham, wh<\/span>om I consider wooden, has managed to render his character adequately. MTV VJ Dan<\/span>dekar, a newcomer in films, does well also. Sachin Khedekar, as the police offic<\/span>er forced to toe the chief minister’s line, is good, but his character has not b<\/span><\/strong>een well-developed in the script. Sunjay Dutt, as mechanic Ali, delivers his per<\/span>formance with aplomb. In spite of such good acting performances, the film lacks <\/span>the pathos which such a script would naturally generate. Yes, there are some tou<\/span>ching and poignant moments, but they are few and far between.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Surprisingly there are no songs in this film, and the background score is medioc<\/span>re enough to go un-noticed. The first half of the film is pretty much used to “s<\/span>et-up” the characters, through detailed scenes showing the love and understandin<\/span>g between Vidyadhar and Sumi, as well as the camraderie and respect they share w<\/span>ith their neighbors and friends. The director manages to create a natural atmosphe<\/span>re in the Patwardhan home, with Amitabh providing much of the well-timed humor. <\/span>Not to say that there aren’t kinks in the script – there are. Besides that, the <\/span>director adds to the film cheesy advertisement like scenes, extolling the virtue<\/span>s of Elf Engine oil as used by mechanic Ali, Nerolac paints as used by the Patwa<\/span>rdhan’s to paint their home, and Western Union as used by Amar to deliver funds <\/span>to aged parents, seriously detracting from the flavor of the film.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The first half pretty much deals with Sumi and Vidyadhar, kids and the good life<\/span>, while the rest of the considerable story is squeezed into the post-interval se<\/span>cond half. And this leads to under-development of the drama, and inadequate atte<\/span>ntion to plot twists which warranted more leisurely treatment. I’d consider this<\/span> the major problem in the movie, and one of the chief reasons why the film loses<\/span> impact. Also, in the second half, the director resorts to over-done and slightl<\/span>y unrealistic emotional moments to shore up his degenerating script, but it does<\/span>n’t help.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Needless to say, this movie falls way short of my expectations, which were of a <\/span>“Saaransh” like film. OK, OK, I agree that that is aiming a bit too high, but I <\/span>did have justification, with Manjrekar’s past record and all that. So, to be fai<\/span>r, sans comparison, this is a reasonably decent film, an attempt to do something<\/span><\/strong> novel and “hatke”, and does warrant a “dekho”.<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rating : Above Average (3.3\/5) Genre : Drama Year : 2005 Running time : 2 hrs and 31 minutes Director : Mahesh Manjrekar Cast : Amitabh Bachhan, Sharmila Tagore, John Abraham, Sanjay Dutt, Sachin Khedekar, Anusha Dandekar, Prem Chopra, Shivaji … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":"","facebook_10233691416821117_190635594420624":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[136,76,14,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-136","category-bollywood","category-drama","category-watchable"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Rating : Above Average (3.3\/5) Genre : Drama Year : 2005 Running time : 2 hrs and 31 minutes Director : Mahesh Manjrekar Cast : Amitabh Bachhan, Sharmila Tagore, John Abraham, Sanjay Dutt, Sachin Khedekar, Anusha Dandekar, Prem Chopra, Shivaji … Continue reading →","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p45CAb-d2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10351,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions\/10351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}