‘Yaara’ Movie Review: Tigmanshu Dhulia’s period gangster drama on friendship, guilt and redemption lacks the punch

Directed By
Tigmanshu Dhulia

Produced By
Tigmanshu Dhulia, Sunir Kheterpal

Cast
Vidyut Jammwal, Shruti Haasan, Amit Sadh, Vijay Varma, Kenny Basumatary, Sanjay Mishra

Bollywood Bubble Rating
What’s Hot
Vijay Varma as Rizwan is one character you’ll remember. His sexy walk, his style of aping Amitabh Bachchan from ‘Deewaar’ and the way he breaks down on seeing his best friend’s die, is something that he’ll be remembered for. Even though he has lesser screen space in comparison to the others, he makes sure that much is worth your time.

Vidyut Jammwal as Phagun carries the film on his shoulders totally. Even though you enter in to watch this film as a Vidyut Jammwal-actioner but you’ll get a lot more from him. He carries the look of a dreaded gangster who has now reformed for the society, and that is definitely worth the mention.

The music of the film by Gourov-Roshin, Shaan, Ankit Tiwari and Siddharth Pandit is another aspect of this film which will stay with you even when you leave. The background score by Clinton Cerejo might seem funny for the layman but in the context of a westerner-style gangster drama, it suits the movie perfectly.

What’s Not
To begin with, Amit Sadh isn’t at the top of his game in this film. He has such a small screen space it seems it could well have been passed off as an extended cameo appearance. He is hardly there in the film. Even though he is the second most important character in the film after Vidyut Jammwal, but it doesn’t seem like that seeing his screen time. I must say, he was 100 times better in ‘Breathe: Into The Shadows’, which released a few days back.

I have no clue why Shruti Haasan said yes to this film. It could have well been done by any newcomer or even a very good-looking junior artiste. Her character, baring aside a scene where she goes to meet Vidyut in the jail, has nothing in it. Being Kamal Haasan’s daughter, who picks every role after thinking a thousand times, I wonder how Shruti could pick up a role which had no meat to portray a justifiable character.

Kenny Basumatary, who is one of the four friends, and presumably one of the four leads, hardly has dialogues. While there have been very important lead characters without any dialogues in the past as well, but this wasn’t such a case, as he hardly got much to perform.

Sanjay Mishra was wasted in a couple of scenes and it went on to prove the fact what he showed in ‘Kaamyaab’ where an actor does certain roles just for the sake of friendship or maybe for paying some bills. This film for Sanjay Mishra is indeed one of those, as he is totally forgettable.

The music of the film even though is good, it comes up as unnecessary as there are so many songs. After almost every 5 minutes there are songs, and that takes your attention away from what’s happening in the foreground. That begs the question about the bad editing by Geeta Singh, who could have easily chopped this 130 minutes film to around 105 minutes, saving the audiences a lot of yawns and making the screenplay look a lot more crisp and tighter.

The most disappointing part of the movie is that it’s been produced and directed by Tigmanshu Dhulia, who has given us great films like Haasil, Paan Singh Tomar, Sahib Biw Gangster, etc. There are indeed some scenes where his superb craftsmanship shows up like the scene where the four leads are being tortured by the police or when Vidyut Jammwal and Shruti Haasan talk to each other inside the jail. Sadly, the mismatch between these brilliant scenes and the many other loosely directed scenes is too much.

Lastly, the film being on the shelves for almost 4-5 years is another aspect that is hurting the movie. Even though it’s a period film, the sensibilities of movie-making have grown up in the past few years, and that lack shows in pretty much every frame.

Verdict
It’s sad that the film has been made by one of the most genius filmmakers of these times, Tigmanshu Dhulia, but the lack of his presence in the promotion of the movie suggests that probably he wasn’t himself happy with the final product. And so are we. If you’re getting bored sitting at home in this pandemic, then this is an okay ONE-TIME watch, otherwise, AVOID. I am going with 2 stars.

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Also Read: ‘Dil Bechara’ Movie Review: Sushant Singh Rajput’s gut-wrenching performance and Sanjana Sanghi’s fresh innocence will leave you weeping for more

Prateek Sur

Born a Movie Buff, working as a Film Critique and enjoying life as a Bollywood Reporter.

Email: editor@bollywoodbubble.com Phone: +91 8355910465