Review of Sanju (2018) by Mayank A — 01 Jul 2018

Superb Movie, Rajkumar Hirani is among the best filmmaker out there in the world and it shows again with Sanju, his artful editing and masterful storytelling tackles a tricky subject. Getting support from the actual person the movie is based on, we get to see aspects of Sanjay Dutt's life not know to the public, this gives us a different picture of what went on. Instead of focusing the movie on his cinematic career, the focus is on his drugs problem and of him being a criminal. Sanju is a bittersweet story full of emotions, of irresponsibility and acknowledgement of the same, there are doses of laughter and sadness. Hirani as the director makes its plain that Sanjay Dutt is a flawed person, but does give us a story which apples for empathy of his situation. We get loads of trademark life funda from Hirani on how to tackle life's problems, each and every one of them is a gem.

For an autobiography the casting has never been better, every character, even the minor ones look the part they play, the best part, is they do justice to the roles with their performance. Ranbir Kapoor as Sanjay Dutt give us the best performance of his life, Paresh Rawal as Sunil Dutt is graceful & Vicky Kaushal as a close friend of Sanju is the actor to watch out for, he has been giving us one crazy performance after another (of my last four Hind movies, three had him in the lead, other two being the Raazi & Love per square feet).

I would love to know how many of the anecdotes show in the movie happened in real life and how many were made up for the movie, some are heart-warming and some outright crazy, still in the end it makes for a fascinating storytelling.