Star cast: Salman Khan, Zarine Khan, Mithun Chakraborty and Jackie Shroff, Vinay Apte, Liza Lazarus, Tim Laurence, Sohail Khan, William Chubb, Jackie Shroff, Geeta Soto, Neena Gupta, Bharat Dabholkar, Shahbaaz Khan, Rajesh Vivek, Yogesh Suri, Ashok Samarth
Director: Anil Sharma;
Veer drives home a few important points. It says that no hype can substitute a good story, not all directors can make a period film and last but not the least, no actor, however big and good he may be, can pull off a bad story.
Veer is a film, from which both the audiences and the industry had very high expectations since everyone thought that if Veer is as big a hit as 3 Idiots, it will prove to be a big boon for Bollywood as a whole. But, all your hopes come crashing down, once you see Veer.
Like many other Bollywood films that you may have seen in the past, Veer seems like a mixture of many old and new films put together. But, with a little bit of Taras Bulba, Gladiator, The Barbarian, Troy and Titanic it has nothing new to offer Further, after stealing the story idea from various films, had the makers kept the climax as original, even that could have proved as a little incentive for the viewers, but Veer fails there also since the climax is quite similar to Manoj Kumar starrer Kranti. If that was not enough, the makers made things worse by ending up with a story, which has not single track. It’s neither a story about love, nor about a worrier and not even a story that talks about patriotism. The writers have tried to tell all these stories in a single film and ended up in a situation where they couldn’t even one of them with perfection and accuracy. On the whole, the story, screenplay and the narration is so poor that by the time the film reaches its end, you are tired and start praying for the film to finish.
Veer is a story of brave Pindaris, who prefer to die fighting British in times, when India is being taken over by the foreigners through their famous divide and rule policy and the kings and nawabs fail to prevent them in their mischievous motives.
As Pindaris fight British, they are led by brave Veer (Salman Khan), who being the bravest, the strongest and the toughest, not only takes on the British Empire but also his own king Madavgarh [Jackie Shroff] and his fellow Pindaris, who are jealous of Veer. Along with being a tale of a worrier taking on the mighty British Empire, the film also talks about the lead character of the film avenging his father’s dishonor and his love for princess Yashodhara [Zarine Khan], daughter of his biggest enemy.
Veer is a big film, which has been shot at a big scale, something that is apparent with its great star cast, great sets and great scenes. The film starts off in a great way but then lack of proper story and screenplay make it crumble and crash when the story moves to London.
One other problem with Veer is that certain portions of the film are very unreal and beyond any sort of human conviction. How can Salman, who meets a woman in his dreams reach London within no time, is beyond anyone’s understanding. If that was not enough, his going and taking admission in the same college where the young girl studies, looks absolutely unnatural and unconvincing.
Though the sequence before the interval, where Salman’s identity becomes known to Puru Raj Kumar is quite interesting, but rather than this becoming the strong point of the film, it proves otherwise as the makers do not take the pain to specify how Puru comes to know all this. Again, just after the interval, how does Salman escape from the hostel after killing so many people, is difficult to digest.
The second hour of the film has become too long with the director trying to show a little bit of everything, which can form a good movie including unfulfilled promise, anger, revenge, love and struggle for freedom. The climax of the film has also been stretched and fails to hold you at any point. In fact, the climax is so unnatural that you cannot resist yourself from thinking how could the makers of Veer take your intellectual abilities for a ride in this manner.
Veer is surely a great idea, which could have been developed into a good film – something that wasn’t to be. The blame for this has to be taken by none other than director Anil Sharma, who fails to deliver this time around.
If there something good in Veer, it’s the quality work of the technical team working behind the camera, which has done a wonderful job. Though the story, screenplay and the director of the film is weak, melodies music by Sajid-Wajid and quality background score by Monty, Gopal Shah’s cinematography, Tinu Verma’s action and Sanjay Dhabade’s art direction are the saving grace of the film.
Salman Khan has tried his best and has succeeded to a large extent but he couldn’t take the film too far all by himself. The leading lady of the film Zarine Khan is a big disappointment and has to learn a lot before she proves herself as a good actor. Sohail Khan is also somewhat disappointing and so are Puru Raj Kumar and Neena Gupta as they do not get much scope in the film. Though, both Mithun Chakraborty and Jackie Shroff have done a good job.
On a whole, the film may get the viewership of Salman’s loyal fans and draw the attention of those few, who are fascinated by the hype created around Veer. But on a whole, it may not have much scope at the Box Office.
