Sarkar is the worst Bollywood adaptation
of the Godfather
 

No sensible filmmaker would have invested so much of star power in a film as inane as Sarkar.

Even to compare this film to the original is blasphemous. The best of the Godfather’s Bollywood adaptations was of course Firoz Khan’s Dharmatma. Premnath lived the title role. There was yet another adaptation in which Govinda played Pacino’s role. It was one of the better films of the ex-star. Sarkar is an insipid copy of that. Ramu has lifted the plot of the film lock, stock and barrel, including the scheming Sadhu and the Dhow off the Mumbai coast.

Ramu lies when he says that the original inspired him. He has lost the capacity to get inspired by anything else but money. He too is into the ‘Maal Banao’ business. So is Big B. All birds of the same feather, who don’t want to fly high any more in search of really exotic food. Their metamorphosis into thick-skinned pigs, who survive off roadside human excreta and roll happily in their own filth in their gilt-edged beds, is complete.

Some say, ‘in terms of technique it is the best work of Ramu’. A tea sipping close-up of Big B is the epitome of film technique in the eyes of these nincompoops. If good technique means copying the black and brown hues of the original, and some over-the-shoulder shots with out-of-focus foreground objects, the ‘dime a dozen’ nappy wearing TV directors in Ekta Kapoor’s Balaji stable can prove themselves to be baaps of Ramu. It is child’s play these days to reference and recreate a Hollywood film frame.
 

 The film uses actors as models. Chal baith ja, tera close up le lete hain. Thoda upar dekh, zara expression de, haan aise, kya shot hai Raja. Cut. OK. Kya mast pose maara hai Baap. This is what all the actors in the film are doing, maroing poses, giving expressions, and delivering seemingly important and original one-liners heard a million times in countless A, B, and C grade films. Kay Kay is as fake as ever. And the Big B is busy slurping tea from a saucer surrounded by a huge posse of stengun-totting extras.  Ramu has not even bothered to crosscheck whether anyone besides the police is permitted to use these kinds of firearms. Ramu’s pet actors do their usual routine things, trying their best to look and sound funny. Everything happens out of the blue for no definite reason. Why the characters behave in a particular way is never established. The director is not actually concerned about building up motivations in the story. He is merely looking for an interesting looking shot and a facial expression that could be combined with thundering background score to create some impact. It is all fake, frivolous, and feckless.

Do you remember what Ramu said about Abhishek Bachchan some time ago? ‘He is better than Amitabh’. However, even Ramu has failed to do much with Small B. He is a fine actor when he is silent. It is just OK if he speaks dialogues like ‘Haan’, ‘Nahin’. No sooner he comes out of the cozy cocoon of monosyllabic dialoguebaazi, things fall apart shockingly and shatteringly. Bhattha baith jata hai. He has been doing this in films after films yet the idiocy continues unabated.

Ramu compounds Abhishek’s problems. He demeans, devalues, degrades, debases, and destroys the original character of Michael Coroleone by his shabby and sloppy adaptation. Abhishek should have discussed his track carefully with Ramu and insisted on amendments in the script, if it existed, and deletion of bizarre and pedestrian stuff like the police station scene and the subsequent chutiapa. One even doubts if he has seen the original Hollywood or various Bollywood adaptations of the film. Michael’s is the central character of the Godfather saga, as we all know. The performances of Pacino and our own Firoz Khan, Aamir, and even Govinda were there to provide him with some ready references for his preparation. Yet he failed miserably, thanks to Ramu and his own stupid self. What is his problem? Where has this stone-headedness come from? Why is he wasting good opportunities? Why cannot he work harder? Why cannot he rise above his own mediocrity?

‘Kya Kool Hain Hum’ has done good business. It was not a bad representative of its genre and it certainly deserved its limited success. Watching Sarkar was an extremely painful experience. Now, some say that the film has opened well in Mumbai. May be. It does not matter though. It is a third class film and one of the worst of the genre. Bunty & Babli has become a major hit too. However, the khullamkhulla fact is that these are all wasted opportunities. It is the success of hype and failure of cinema.

MS