‘R...Rajkumar’ review: Senseless, bad filmmaking!

Gayatri Sankar

The Indian audiences have certainly matured. They are no longer the lot who blow wolf-whistles when the hero single handedly beats up a bunch of goons. ‘R...Rajkumar’ directed by Prabhudheva is what an average movie goer wouldn’t really want to see.Starring Shahid Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha and Sonu Sood, ‘R...Rajkumar’ has been shot in a rustic backdrop. The filmmaker tried to cash in on the latest trend of showing a street-smart ‘road side Romeo’, dressed in gaudy shirts who falls in love with a good girl. Remember ‘Besharam’? Wonder what made Prabhudheva even come up with a film like ‘R...Rajkumar’ that has nothing but headache to offer? Rajkumar (Shahid) is a street smart orphan guy who comes to Dhartipur, a dreaded place ruled by two drug mafias. The purpose of his visit is however established towards the end of the film but it doesn’t convince you at all. The moment Rajkumar steps into Dhartipur, he sees the two warring gangs headed by Shivraj (Sonu Sood) and Parmar (Ashish Vidyarthi) indulge in a gun battle. Here he comes across the love of his life- Chanda (Sonakshi Sinha) - who he tries to save from fierce bullets. Chanda is Parmar’s niece and quite a courageous girl who doesn’t fear roughing up men who tease her. Rajkumar joins Shivraj’s gang and instantly becomes his blue eyed boy. Shivraj uses Rajkumar to befriend his rival gang so that he could carry out his drug deal without hassles. Parmar strikes a deal with Shivraj by offering the hand of his niece to him. And that is when a love triangle begins. Shahid Kapoor, who has earlier essayed meaningful roles, has somehow let his career graph go haywire by choosing films that turn out to be a complete dampener. Both Sonakshi and Shahid have tremendous potential and perhaps more films like ‘Kaminey’ and ‘Lootera’ can help them accelerate their somewhat stagnant careers, for they have a lot more to offer. The audiences would certainly love to see Sonu Sood essaying a variety of characters and not just the typical rustic baddie that he has repeated with this movie. It felt good to see Ashish Vidyarthi back in Bollywood, but perhaps the choice of his comeback character could have been much better. The songs apart from ‘Gandi Baat’ have not been impressive and even the background score sounded juvenile. `R...Rajkumar’ is a vague attempt to produce a film with a variety of emotions, but sadly you will find no trace of any kind of emotion, not even humour. The filmmaker has failed to make even a single moment where the movie viewer connects to any of the movie characters. For instance, in the climax action sequence, Rajkumar gets badly beaten up by Shivraj. Instead of empathising with the hero getting roughed up so miserably, the audience seems to be waiting for the “drama” to end. The dialogues will remind you of the legendary Rajinikanth but the panache is missing. Rajkumar is often heard saying, “be silent else I will get violent”. After watching the film, your sane senses would have been put to rest and hence you would take his advice very seriously and stay silent. Watch the film only if you don’t love yourself!