Son Set:
A father in uniform chooses duty over the safety of his abducted son. The boy grows up resenting the betrayal and crosses over to the dark side. That’s the basic plot of Ramesh Sippy’s Shakti, which Kayoze Irani has borrowed and set against the insurgency in Kashmir. The title Sarzameen is a bit show-offy, since it’s not a commonly user word.
Colonel Vijay Menon (Prithviraj Sukumaran) lives with his wife Meher (Kajol) and young son Harman (Ronav Parihar) in Kashmir. The boy stutters and looks timid which to his father is a sign of weakness. To Menon, the son’s inability to stand up to bullies, nixes his chances of joining the army, like men in his family. The messaging is a bit problematic, the suggestion that violence is a mark of manliness.
Militants get active in Kashmir after a gap, and the invisible mastermind is Mohsin. Menon manages to arrest two terrorists, Qabil (KS Shankar) and his brother, sure that he has captured the wanted terrorist. In retaliation, Harman is kidnapped, with the demand for the release of the two men in return for the child.
Hit by a sudden bout of patriotism, Menon backs off the exchange and shoots Qabil’s brother. In the mayhem, Harman is feared dead. Strange that Menon just turns and walks away, but if logic is questioned, the film would collapse. The twist it presets in the end is so ludicrous that everything that has gone before falls apart.
Twelve years later, a young man is rescued from a terrorist camp, and turns out to be Harman (Ibrahim Ali Khan). The father is skeptical, but the mother won’t tolerate any doubts. What they don’t realise is that Qabil has indoctrinated Harman with hatred for his father, who left him to die.
Having Herman in Kashmir, allows Qabil to plan a major attack at an event. Father- son now stand on opposite sides. It is an emotionally fraught scene, when that weird twist comes to ruin it.
Prithviraj Sukumaran, the sole saving grace of this film, brings a solemn dignity to the role, as opposed to Kajol’s screechy overacting. Ibrahim Ali Khan is unable to bring out the complexities of the part; he looks either baffled of shifty.
Considering Irani is a young director, his style is stodgy. And that annoyingly device of every dramatic scene having a wailing song in the background. As if audiences wouldn’t understand it otherwise.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)
