Swatantrya Veer Savarkar

Randeep Hooda. Randeep Hooda doesn't just work, he flies. He is insane to pull off a role like this. Words fall short in praise of him. It's a privilege to watch a piece of content made with this kind of passion. The story of Swatantrya Veer Savarkar is extremely gripping and keeps you on the edge, through its course of three hours. The screenplay is solid. The dialogues pack a solid punch; Few may convince you to stand up and clap. The camera work is excellent and the techniques used to make the movie, make the movie very immersive. The best parts of the movie for me were the conversations between Savarkar and Gandhi; Civil conversations of two individuals with very different views on India's fight for freedom.

If there was more balance in these portrayals (Savarkar is shown dissing Nathuram Godse in a throwaway sentence after the Mahatma’s assassination, saying ‘usse woh nahin karna chahiye thaa’, before going right back to his position) it would have enriched the film all-round. It is also an account of the making of a nation, and the figures involved in the freedom struggle: the array of young rebels being sent to the gallows, the noose and their faces, framed against a black screen, which include Madanlal Dhingra and Chandrashekar Azad, is an effective device. Hooda’s playing of Savarkar, the physical transformation in prison with his ribs showing and teeth rotting, and achieving an astonishing likeness of his subject, is admirable. But its one-sidedness makes it stridently one-sided, and, ultimately, reductive.