Youth awakens to marry INQUILAB

Rating: 10/10 (19 March 2006)

Of late, Bollywood movies are awakening to shed its chocolate-movies image. Passionate and patriotic movies such as Indian, Fiza, Sarfarosh, Swades, and etc have intermittently showed the glitters of Bollywood - propagating that Bollywood too can produce inspiring and refreshing movies. But Rang De Basanti (RDB) cannot be called a movie. It is something more, has transcended the realm of a movie-zone (to be precise, Bollywood movie-zone). After watching the RDB (I don't want to categorize it as a movie) no one can or should say that Bollywood movies are just laden with huge costumes, dances, unrealistic and dramatized characters.
RDB is so refreshing in all its facets that it makes you think differently. SMS generation deems any message with more than four-lines as a lecture. So the generation needs to be admonished differently, and the way the parallels drawn from the Freedom struggle from aliens with the current Freedom struggle from your own bureaucracy stands out tall among other all-beautiful-tenets of this RDB.
Amir Khan is a delight to watch in RDB. Amir Khan's crying because of his helplessness in just being a spectator to the Rapid Action Force's lathi-charge on the silent revolutionaries sums out the veritable young Indian citizen's anguish. The frolic and fun-filled youth belie the very serious resolution they possess. Sidharth's role is controlled and yet most powerful. He conveys a youth's ideals and executes their wish to the hilt.
Hats off to the director, Rakesh Omprakash Mehra, for making such a wonderful bigger-than-a-movie called RDB. RDB would surely lift the Bollywood to new heights. Rahman's music and taut screenplay gels perfectly with the movie. Special mention has to be made about Soha Ali Khan and Alice Payton (played as Sue). They both are stunning. They are far better than the aspiring (obviously Miss World/Universe beauty queens) and most of the current female actresses.