Review of Sanju (2018) by Khwahish K — 12 Jul 2018

The right way to apologize for anything is to completely own your failure of judgment. You present your apology without providing excuses for your actions and you let the person you are apologizing to freely choose to accept or deny your apology.

If Sanju is meant to be an apology to the Indian public from its titular character, then it utterly fails in being one. Sanju is one of the few movies I had to research after watching it to truly understand the breadth of lies it propagates.

In the current environment, it is cool to blame the media for every wrong in the country and in the world. And I feel that is justified to quite an extent. But blaming the media is also the easy way out. If all you are doing is blaming the media for something, then you are also guilty of the same charge: you aren't presenting the complete story.

I am not sure what Hirani's goal was with the movie. In a time when we can Google things to find out the truth, Sanju's image in the film as a spoilt brat who was just in the wrong company at the wrong time is easy to demolish. Besides, we would still watch Munnabhai 3 without this film, so the only goal seems to have is to add a couple of crores to the pockets of everyone involved.

And I think that is great. There's nothing wrong with it. But if you are going to call something a biopic, have the guts to deliver a biopic. A disclaimer in the beginning about cinematic liberties doesn't absolve you of the deliberate use of the word 'biopic' in your marketing for the film.

At the very least, this could have been called a semi-biography and I would have loved it instead of picking at its so-called truth. 8 Mile, starring Eminem, does a great job of this.

I liked Ranbir Kapoor for the work he has put in, though what you get from him is a mix of both Sanjay Dutt and Ranbir himself. To me, Paresh Rawal was miscast and hence, disappointing. Perhaps he was one of the few people who knew Sunil Dutt enough to do justice to the role, but honestly, his presence on the screen was as if his character from Welcome was sent to the set to play a serious role.

The little we get of Manisha Koirala as Nargis is breath-taking. A movie about Sunil and Nargis's romance would be worth a watch, with Manisha playing her. Vicky Kaushal's Kamli is impressive, but some of the Gujju jokes feel dated and overdone.

The court already said Sanjay isn't a terrorist and I believed it at the time. I was hoping to see more of his controversial life here. His flings and marriages, his antics on set and at least a mention of his iconic movies. Sadly, Bollywood was missing from a film about Bollywood's bad boy.