Raajneeti Plot

The head of a political party suffers a heart attack on the eve of state elections. His son Veerendra (Manoj Bajpai) is ready to take over when the chief leader Brij Gopal (Nana Patekar) convinces the chief to appoint Veerendra’s uncle as his successor. This throws Veerendra’s plan into a tailspin as his cousin Prithvi (Arjun Rampal), now 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 an attack on Veerndra’s uncle and also arrests Prithvi in ​​a sex scandal.

Seeing the plight of his family Samar (Ranbir Kapoor), Prithvi’s younger brother plots his revenge. An outsider who is not interested in politics, Samar chooses to remain in the background as he casts his brother as the candidate for Chief Minister. In the middle of all this is Indu, the daughter of a rich 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.

The biggest film of Prakash Jha’s career, Raaajneeti attempts to make a radical statement on Indian politics, but suffers from many biases that end up making the film seem largely outdated and partly boring. Show this: Every time someone is shot and fighting for her life in the hospital, Nana Patekar just walks into the ER with no questions asked or the scene where just talking to her is enough to revive a sedated character . Based on the Mahabharat epic, Rajneeti’s screenplay borrows liberally from The Godfather. Anjum Rajabali and Prakash Jha, who co-wrote the script, don’t hesitate to shamelessly transport iconic moments from Coppola’s classic throughout the film.

The cast of Raajneeti and their contribution

Raajneeti starts off great as she sets up the characters and sets the stage for the dirty dancing of Indian politics, but once she shows us the menu and takes our order, the food just doesn’t show up. Jha takes a big step up from Gangajal and Apharan, but even with a great all-star cast and a pretty decent premise, Raajneeti just doesn’t take off. The film has enough for all the actors and while Manoj Bajpai, Ajay Devgan and Nana Patekar duly deliver, it’s not like we haven’t seen these things before. Surprisingly given his previous films, both Katrina Kaif and Arjun Rampal are pretty decent in the film and Ranbir Kapoor, at the center of it all, manages to hold his own.

One wishes that Prakash Jha had put a little more thought into the content of the film than the execution. His chaste Hindi dialogue makes Raajneeti seem like a bad college play on most occasions; his local Indu sounds more British than the foreign return Samar and some scenes like Indu’s father asking Samar’s mother to make Samar the Chief Minister candidate because it would be the best thing for his daughter and Samar telling his brother to stay marry Indu because he can’t even think about being the CM and Samar tells Indu to marry her brother because if she doesn’t her father will marry her to Veerendra who would become the CM if her father didn’t finance Prithvi, is so silly that one wonders if this is really Jha’s serious stance on Indian politics.

Final words on Raajneeti

At nearly three hours of playtime, Raajneeti is long enough to get you intertwined and bored. As someone mentioned while watching the movie that it all looks like a long trailer, Raajneeti at best looks like one of those TV news shows where they relentlessly follow a candidate’s election campaign.

Raajneeti Cast: Nana Patekar, Ajay Devgn, Ranbir Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Manoj Bajpai, Arjun Rampal, and Naseruddin Shah
Raajneeti Screenplay: Anjum Rajabali and Prakash Jha based on the story of Prakash Jha
Raajneeti Directed by: Prakash Jha
Raajneeti Ratings: 2/5
RaajneetiMusic: Wayne Sharpe