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The trailer of the film ‘Lucknow Central’ has been released and it’s intriguing. It is set against the backdrop of a jail, where Farhan plays the role of a prisoner, aspiring to be a singer.

Kishen Mohan Girhotra is a young man who belongs to Moradabad, a city in Uttar Pradesh. One fateful day, Kishen gets accused of murder which lands him in Lucknow Central Jail where he’s awaiting his High Court trial for a death penalty. Meanwhile, a diligent NGO worker Gayatri Kashyap, is compelled to form a Band of Prisoners for the band competition which is to be held in the dreaded jail of ‘Lucknow Central’ that year and this is how Kishen’s and her paths cross.

Kishen befriends 4 other inmates, Dikkat Ansari, Victor Chattopahdyay, Purushottam Pandit, Parminder Trehan and convinces them to join the band.

The dramatic narrative of Lucknow Central portrays how Kishen’s life progresses in jail and how music becomes an intricate part of not only his journey, but the rest of the band’s as well.

Produced by Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, Nikkhil Advani, Monisha Advani and Madhu Bhojwani. Lucknow Central stars Farhan Akhtar, Diana Penty, Gippy Grewal, Ronit Roy, Deepak Dobriyal, InaamUlHaq & Rajesh Sharma.

The film is set to release on 15th September, 2017.

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Film: “Sarkar 3”; Director: Ram Gopal Varma; Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Amit Sadh, Manoj Bajpai, Ronit Roy, Yami Gautam; Rating: ****

It is easy to see the third instalment of Ram Gopal Varma’s “Sarkar” franchise as an unnecessary carryover of a saga that has lost its relevance and sheen. But “Sarkar 3” rises far above the wasteland of a stagnant crime-drama to give us an insight into a life of outlawry that is richly layered with blood and drama.

Bal Thackeray is dead. Long live Bal Thackeray. In Amitabh Bachchan’s persona –steely, gritty, imperturbable, granite-hard and yet malleable and vulnerable — the Thackeray doppelganger is uncanny. The walk, the talk and the ability to walk that talk to places where the dialogue writer would never have imagined. Take a bow, Mr B. They don’t make em like you anymore.

It takes courage to build one more plot around that formidable and imposing figure from Maharashtra’s politics who rewrote the rules of politics and who gave political arrogance a sexy edge. The last Sarkar film came 9 years ago. And the figure of Subhash Nagre is now threatened with obsolescence, if not complete irrelevance.

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And yet here lies Varma’s triumph. He manufactures a compelling if somewhat cramped and at times campy yarn of a wizened but still-spirited political outlaw who has no appetite for betrayal and disloyalty.
“In order to understand politics you first need to get a hang of the politics in the family. It’s called Palace politics,” says Subhash Nagre, slurping tea out of the plate while, please note, the grandson Shivaji (Amit Sadh in engaging form) also slurps over his cuppa.

Lineage, continuity and perpetuity are big in “Sarkar 3”. Outsiders are seen as traitors and marauders. In fact the film makes a pitch for nepotism in crime and politics arguing that absolute loyalty can only be traced in the bloodline. In blueprinting this genealogical fact of clannish life, the narrative stretches the tendons of its muscular drama into scenes that are constructed robustly and at times with enrapturing vividness.

There are some terrific shootouts in this film reminiscent of episodes from Ram Gopal Varma’s best gangster films in the past. Parking lots are a favourite haunt for violence in this film. Ram Gopal Varma seems to tell us there’s more to cars than Rohit Shetty. Indeed “Sarkar 3” marks the return to form for the long-disoriented filmmaker. He cuts and shoots the scenes in long shots and breathless pauseless frames that cover the dramatic tension without toppling over into overstatements.

Manoj Bajpai joins the gang-war somewhere in the preamble and opts out too soon. He has some of the best lines on the criminalization of politics. Sadly the script doesn’t listen to Bajpai’s harangue, busy as it is hero-worshipping the outlawed aging hero. Bajpai’s one sequence with Mr. Bachchan where Bajpai’s character Govind Deshpande mocks Mr. Bachchan’s Nagre from a public podium for subverting Gandhian ideals is worth its weight in gold.

Of course Varma being Varma he does like shooting his actors from odd angles, like Yami Gautam, who has never looked more seductive, captured from inside the handle of a teacup. Tea-hee.

The women, Gautam, Supriya Pathak and Rohini Hattangadi get little space in this predominantly masculine war of supremacy. And that one scene where Hattangadi blows a kiss at her screen son would have you whistling in excitement.

The background score didn’t have to be persuasive, though. We get the point without the over-punctuation.

Strangely very few people get killed in the course of the storytelling although the body count seems a lot higher. And when archvillain Jackie Shroff, swimming and sexing in Dubai, dies at the end “that’s not a spoiler, it’s nemesis”, we feel a surge of empathy for the Nagre family that has lost a lot of blood, but never in vain.

Watch “Sarkar 3” for the way Varma frames the familial feud in flames of fury. The performances are largely effective specially those by Ronit Roy and Amit Sadh. The latter comes into his own as Mr Bachchan’s uncontrollable grandson. But above all, this is one more triumphant celluloid outing for Amitabh Bachchan who invests his role of the aging tiger-neta with a kind of cosmic resonance that goes way beyond that famous baritone.

Yup, they don’t make star-actors like Amitabh Bachchan any more. Ram Gopal Varma reminds us of the Bachchan charisma in ways that are deeply nostalgic and exceedingly provocative.

By Subhash K Jha

IANS

The much-awaited trailer of Hrithik Roshan’s ‘Kaabil’ is finally out. And looks like the makers have a winner in hand. The trailer promises a sleek commercial production, which tick marks on all the right boxes.

Watch the trailer here: 

In Kaabil, Hrithik and Yami Gautam play a blind couple and in the trailer their chemistry appears adorable.But then the movie has its share of villains in real life brothers Ronit Roy and Rohit Roy. In the trailer the makers have left strong hints that Hrithik avenges his wife’s murder. 

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Earlier in the day, before the trailer release, Hrithik Roshan had also shared new Kaabil poster on social media.

This is the first time Yami Gautam, 27, and Hrithik Roshan, 42, will share screen space. In an interview with IANS, Yami shared her experience of working with Hrithik and said: “He is so inspiring. There is no way that you will come out uninspired when you talk to him or work with him. Now I know what makes him a superstar. He never takes his work for granted at all. He has the zeal to keep outdoing himself, make himself better than before. He is so inspiring. He will make sure that you are absolutely in your character and that what you deliver is the perfect shot. It’s not just with me. It’s with anyone working with him.”

Kaabil is directed by Sanjay Gupta and produced by Hrithik’s father Rakesh Roshan and slated to release on January 26.