Rajneeti

The whole team was thirsting for a day out and after a lot of discussion we decided to do a lunch and a movie. The first discussion on the team outing started sometime in March and we finally came up with a date in June. Considering that the team was pretty small - we did not have to do the mail with voting buttons nor did we have to break our heads too much on which movie to catch. We all met for lunch and identified a Hindi movie that was being released on that day. Yup - Rajneeti.

Come Friday and all of us troop in with goofy smiles and lots of laughter. We are off for lunch before we know it, to Bamboo Shoots. We arrive there well ahead of time to find out that the restaurant is now known as Red Bamboo Shoots and it no longer has a buffet. Because we had split up in two groups, 4 of us arrived early and spent some time chatting till the others came. All the waiting and the chatting made us late for the movie - we lost 15 mts. In fact, we missed Naseeruddin Shah. It was only the next day wen I saw a poster of the movie which included him, tht I went - Oops!! We sneaked into the theatre during the Arjun Rampal scene and found our way to the Gold Class of Fame Shankarnag without making too much noise.

What I liked 'bout the movie:

• Amazing casting coup and each actor was chosen for the appropriate role who underplayed it perfectly - well, almost.
• Arjun Rampal was good. He was not his usual wooden self but played the role of an angry young man who has no control on the aggressive nature of his reactions - Score!!
• Only 2 songs - Score!!

What I did not like 'bout the movie:

• Katrina - a totally wrong choice for the role; all the hype involving her Hindi - she has a total of 3 scenes in the movie and none of them are note-worthy - with or without her spouting Hindi
• Because it was based on the Mahabharata, there was nothing unpredictable in the movie - no twists and turns - nothing unexpected which makes the movie a bit boring considering it is a loooong one.
• It had all the ingredients to make the movie fantastic but falls short. Is not hard-hitting enuf and you can watch the movie as a disconnected Audience which is where the movie fails.