Raajneeti plot
The head of a political party suffers a heart attack on the eve of the state elections. His son Veerendra (Manoj Bajpai) is ready to take command when Senior Leader Brij Gopal (Nana Patekar) convinces the chief to appoint Veerendra’s uncle as his successor. This sends Veerendra’s plan into a tailspin, as his cousin Prithvi (Arjun Rampal), now the party secretary, would eventually inherit the legacy. Veerendra befriends Suraj (Ajay Devgan), an upstart who got off on the wrong foot with Prithvi. The son of Prithvi’s driver, Suraj, in fact turns out to be Prithvi’s older brother who was discarded at birth because he was born out of wedlock. Suraj orders a hit on Veerndra’s uncle and also gets Prithvi arrested in a sex scandal.
Seeing the plight of his family, Samar (Ranbir Kapoor), Prithvi’s younger brother plans his revenge. An outsider who is not interested in politics, Samar chooses to remain in the background as he casts his brother as the top ministerial candidate. In the middle of all this is Indu, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, who loves Samar but ends up marrying Prithvi. Things get murkier when boundaries cease to exist in the dirty game of politics where people stop at nothing.
Raaajneeti, the biggest film of Prakash Jha’s career, tries to make a radical statement about Indian politics, but suffers from many biases that end up making the film seem largely outdated and partly boring. Show This: Whenever someone is shot and fights for their life in the hospital, Nana Patekar simply walks into the ER with no questions asked or the scene where her simple talk is enough to revive a sedated character. Based on the epic Mahabharat, Rajneeti’s script borrows generously from The Godfather. Anjum Rajabali and Prakash Jha, who co-wrote the script, don’t hesitate to blatantly transport iconic moments from the Coppola classic throughout the film.
Raajneeti Cast and his contribution
Raajneeti starts off great, as he sets the characters up by setting the stage for the dirty dance of Indian politics, but once he shows us the menu and takes the order, the food just doesn’t show up. Jha takes a big step above Gangajal and Apharan, but even with a great cast of stars and a pretty decent premise, Raajneeti just doesn’t take off. The movie has enough for all the actors and while Manoj Bajpai, Ajay Devgan, and Nana Patekar deliver properly, it’s not like we haven’t seen these things before. Given their previous films, surprisingly, both Katrina Kaif and Arjun Rampal are pretty decent in the movie and Ranbir Kapoor at the center of it all manages to hold his own.
One wishes Prakash Jha had given a little more thought to the content of the film rather than the execution. His chaste Hindi dialogue makes Raajneeti look like a bad college play in most parts; your local Indu sounds more British than the foreigner Samar returned and some scenes like Indu’s father asking Samar’s mother to make Samar the prime candidate for ministry because he would do the best for his daughter and Samar telling his brother that marry Indu because he can’t even think about being the CM and Indu told Samar to marry her brother because if she doesn’t then her father will marry her to Veerendra who would become the CM if her father doesn’t financed Prithvi. he wonders if this is really Jha’s serious view of Indian politics.
Final words on Raajneeti
With nearly three hours of playtime, Raajneeti just enough to entwine and bore him. As someone mentioned while watching the movie that everything looks like a long trailer, Raajneeti at best looks like one of those TV news channel shows where they relentlessly follow a candidate’s election campaign.
Cast of Raajneeti: Nana Patekar, Ajay Devgn, Ranbir Kapoor, KatrinaKaif, Manoj Bajpai, Arjun Rampal and Naseruddin Shah
Raajneeti’s script: Anjum Rajabali and Prakash Jha based on the story of Prakash Jha
Raajneeti Directed by: Prakash Jha
Raajneeti’s Scores: 2/5
Raajneeti Music: Wayne Sharpe