Raajneeti - Political Resemblance and Movie Review

Here is my movie review of Raajneeti, the most awaited film of the year, which released this Friday. After all the pre-release hype likening Katrina Kaif's role to the life of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, I was quite relieved to see that her role was more similar to the life of Sonia's sister-in-law Maneka Gandhi. Katrina's look and personality is just not foreign or posh enough to be Sonia Gandhi. Well, here is my complete movie review of Raajneeti.


Raajneeti - 7/10 - Political Drama

The film is about the struggle for political power between the family members of the Pratap political dynasty. This struggle begins after the oldest member of the Pratap family and the President of the Rashtriya Party suffers a paralytic stroke and hands over more power to his younger brother and nephew against his son. The movie continues with its story of political debauchery, assassinations, power, money and revenge.

The script and direction was very good. The film moved at a fast pace and had a strong screenplay. Raajneeti was well cast and performances by the lead actors were decent with even actors in bit parts doing a good job. Manoj Bajpai really shone in the role of Veerendra Pratap, the angry son who was left almost powerless by the decision of his father. Costumes and dialogue were quite realistic. Everyone's going to remember 'Karara Jawab Milega' for a long time now!


Resemblance to Real Life Politicians in Raajneeti

The characters in the Rajneeti movie bore quite a lot of resemblance to contemporary politicians in India. Some were but obvious, can you guess the rest??

• Ranbir Kapoor's young, foreign returned, political novice Samar Pratap - Rajiv Gandhi
• Sarah Thompson's beautiful, innocent, anti-politics, Samar's Irish classmate Sarah Collins - Sonia Gandhi
  
• Arjun Rampal's impulsive, brash, political Prithviraj Pratap - Sanjay Gandhi
• Katrina Kaif's politically ambitious, model looking young widow Indu Pratap - Maneka Gandhi
• Manoj Bajpai's angry, politically wronged Veerendra Pratap - Varun Gandhi
  
• Ajay Devgan's local sports background, ruthless Dalit leader Sooraj Kumar - ?
• Nana Patekar's power-behind-the scenes Brij Gopal -Bal Thackeray
  
• Naseeruddin Shah's firebrand leftist leader 'Bhaskar Sanyal' who became a sanyas - George Fernandes
• The paralysed Party President, Veerendra Pratap's father - Sharad Pawar
  

Did you see Raajneeti? How would you rate the film? Which real life politicians/people do you think the characters resemble the most?