I soooooo cant wait for this film, below is the link to the trailer:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=RCpLHYbUUp0

Sarkar was excellent, I hope Sarkar Raj lives up to the first part

I'm surprised that of all people, Ramu is collaborating with the Balaji production house.

well he got no choice after his spat with t-series...lol

Aish is the villain in the flick?

I read the preview where she convinces AB jr to something and he convinces Big B and the circumstances of it is what the flick is about ..

A new showreel of Sarkar Raj...looks awesome

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om7ZG1khWEk&feature=user

Fabulous 'jalwa' promo....totally intense..

http://youtube.com/watch?v=EguBXC4Yc-M

It looks OK. Doesn't look like a remake of Godfather 2 as was originally planned. But as RGV has proved more recently he can make a really bad film every now and again.

Ram Gopal Varma has announced that he's going to remake Aag, as he says "the way it should've been done". So he's saying that the current version of Aag is not the way it should've been done, even though he was entirely responsible for it. But I remember him saying this of all the films he made or were associated with that flopped. He said he was going to do James, Nishabd and even Shiva again, despite the fact that Shiva was already a remake. I think he's lost it. Would you guys actually go and see a remake of Aag (sholay) again?

Ok, now I'm sure to get some negative reactions out of this, but hey, it's a forum. I don't think Sarkar Raj was ever meant to be a Godfather Part II like film. After all, Sarkar wasn't purely The Godfather. It took the basic premise and RGV made it his own. The movie was decent and it restored some faith back into RGV. Then, he made blunder after blunder and dare I say, when Aag was announced, I actually looked forward to it. I thought RGV would do the same thing he did with Sarkar. He took a movie he loved and respected, The Godfather, and paid perfect homage to it. With Aag, I assumed he'd take the formula of Sholay and place it into the Mumbai underworld that he knows so well and give it the RGV touch. I don't know, perhaps I gave him too much credit but I know that's the product I would've happily enjoyed. Perhaps all the bickering between the Sippy's and RGV caused him to change some things and make it a literal remake of Sholay in which only the setting was changed (and names although forced). I am in no way saying that Aag was a masterpiece, far from it, but the movie I imagined and the movie that showed up, well, we know how that turned out. Now, would I watch a remake of the remake? I'd give it a shot, if it was made how I can only assume he would now make it. I don't think the public is going to give it a fighting chance, not now (at least not on any movie that has the words 'RGV' and 'Sholay' assosociated with it). I think Sarkar Raj will do what Sarkar did for RGV. Or at least I hope so. We know he has it in him to make films that are good, if not great.

You've got to wonder if he actually had anything to loose in the first place or was a leech who fed of other talents around him.

Ali

Ok, dude music is out! Nikalte hi pit gaya!

Too much Govinda in Sarkar Raj

Raja Sen | June 02, 2008 13:12 IS





It's a curious composer choice. Ram Gopal Varma, who usually turns to men like Sandeep Chowta to pack his music with 'punch,' hands over the baton to Khosla Ka Ghosla [Images] co-composers Bapi-Tutul for his upcoming slice of close-up commercial masala, Sarkar Raj. What are the results? Well, the lads might have talent, but this is an unimpressive album they'd rather forget.



Despite the thudding rhythm, opening track Jalwa Re Jalwa somewhat suffers from Kailesh Kher's now-predictable vocals. Kher is a talented singer with range, but this is clearly meant to be a gimmicky rabble-rouser track, one that has the tough job of being able to pull off the Govinda-Govinda chorus and still be fun. It tries, with a saam-daam-dand-bhed undercurrent that sounds like John Woo ordering in parathas, but thanks to an attempt at actually trying to sound like a genuine bhajan -- and this is where they should have hired a rapper, not an actual devotional singer -- the track flounders between irony, idiocy and hymn.

Interestingly, singers play against type in Jhini Jhini. Roop Kumar Rathod sounds less maudlin than he has in ages, and Sweta Pandit goes nasal enough to be called tinny. The music itself features nothing to recommend it, however, except for an I-miss-Ramu feel pervading the synth-heavy, violent rhythm.



Jalte Rawan is a decentish rock track with good vocals from Abhishek -- not Bachchan Junior, clearly -- and thanks to a smartly used chorus, this is the song that one can imagine Ramu setting hardcore visuals against and really making it work. Not a montage though, please.

Track 4 is the scary one, for those of us still reeling from the Govinda [Images] running through the background score in the first Sarkar. Quite alarmingly called The Govinda Theme, the composers bravely tackle this one themselves, accompanied by a chorus. The sound is campy and kinda 80s, but -- what with all the wailing, and the occasional staccato 'Govinda!' standing out against the choral Go-vinnnnn-das -- it seems intentionally bizarre, as if Amitabh and Abhishek were duking it out in a cathedral, or -- better yet -- a belfry. It's purely background score, though.


The funereal keyboard tinkling continues as the bewildering Chaah Bhanwar Trishna (sung by Sunayana Sarkar Dasgupta -- how apropos that middle name, no?) starts, a bhajan set to a piano providing a two-fingered -- ooh, we're so dark! -- bassline-substitute. There's a bunch of muddled lyrics trying their best to sound profound, and this song about sleeplessness is what one can envision brooding closeups pre-climactically set against. Blah. It doesn't build up to much.

Subah starts off with Jhini Jhini again, set this time to a slurring guitar. Pamela Jain has one of those high-pitched voices that ensure you don't ever accompany her in a roller-coaster, but there isn't that much of her in this reprise. Again, the bass is monotonous, and despite much varied string-work, it's another been-there-slept-to-that kinda track.

A drum roll kicks off Saher Saher Ke Hajharon Sawal menacingly, but then there comes that omnipresent word. By itself, Saher Ke Sawal might have been interesting -- a curious ditty about a curious city -- and Sandeep Nath's lyrics finally bring out a smirk, but there's too much Govinda again, relegating the song itself to no importance. Not to mention that the much-caricatured Amitabh 'hain' almost seems to be running in loop alongside the Govindas. I kid you not.



And then -- perfectly on cue -- the Bachchan baritone takes over and repeats what is clearly being marketed as the line of the film, the I-do-what-I-want Sarkarism that the filmmakers hope will make it to t-shirts. What's this one called? The Govinda Chant. No, really. Yup, again.

The rest of the album is mired in more of the same. We have Saam Daam, which we heard in track one, now getting its own track (but no additional lyric) and far too much tambourine for its own good. And then there's more G-force(d upon us) with The Govinda Groove -- that same Bachchan line repetitively set against a dull bit of electronica -- and The Govinda Trance -- which actually momentarily has enough trance force to even enliven Govinda-Govinda, but the parts sans chorus work best.

The album is capped off by The Jalwa (Club Mix) which takes its own sweet time getting over the saam-daam before hitting the drumpad, and doesn't do anything particularly inspiring after that either. GovindaGovindaGovinda, no matter just how you slip it into a song, isn't ever going to have the dancefloor force of a Hare Krishna Hare Ram.

All in all, this is a repetitive album. There are times it tries to be quirky -- and there's a definite Phantom Of The Opera sense to it all, which is interesting -- but ultimately every track here is pure background score, unable to stand on its own without Ramu's meticulously-crafted frames to make the audio effective. Even if the film is a smash hit, this CD will still be a rare curio running on a few car-rides, to turn a track on and smile at before putting on actual music.

And if indicative of the film to come, this is indeed an ill portent. Even if you close your eyes and try to picture the almighty Amitabh doing his thing against the soundtrack, this really is Govinda-overdose like never before. What's next, boss? Bade Miyan Chhote Miyan 2?

Rediff Rating:
1.5/10

I just saw the preview showing of this movie....one word....AWESOME....this film is an excellent...superb performances....great direction...and it is better than the prequel

Also I think it is Ram Gopal Varma's BEST work to date

FILM OF THE YEAR

Good for RGV, looks like he is finally getting back his jadoooo.

hopefully it is not a royal loser in ramu style!

Doc, here is rediff:

Sarkaricature Raj

Raja Sen | June 06, 2008 17:54 IST





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Perhaps, because the real-life political supremo Ram Gopal Varma's Subhash Nagre is loosely based on used to be a cartoonist, the director chose to do away with character sketches completely in Sarkar Raj and work exclusively with broadly stroked outlines instead.

Also Read: Showcasing Sarkar Raj

Unfortunately, replacing character sketches with extreme, extreme close ups doesn't work all the time, and this film, for the most part, falls very flat, a well-lit and overdone follow-up to an overrated original. The acting is fine, but this is eventually a film without enough meat to sustain itself through to the end, culminating in an inevitably stifled whimper.

Right from the first scene -- starting as an uptempo throwback to the great barb-wire opening minutes of the original -- the mood is set. There is a dark room, sickeningly yellow beams of light filtering onto the characters artfully, almost bathing the ever-scowling characters in sepiatone, and all the frames are weirdly angular, shots composed around coffee mugs and ring-fingers and half a character's ear. The whole film seems like a disparate series of finely composed frames, as if Ram Gopal Varma inadvertently videotaped his attempts at photographing a Sarkar-themed calendar for the Bachchan family.

Oh, and the characters don't talk in this film. Never. They deliver dialogues. Big and unwieldy lines, laced with strange metaphors that the characters can't do without. It's all threats and explanations of threats, and this kills this film, this long and unnatural sea of unashamedly expository dialogue, with literally just a line or two of quirky Ramu relief to be found in the whole film.

And hey, I get the point. This is a masala bang-bang shoot-em-up mafia movie, and one can't possibly overestimate the importance of high-drama moments like the one described above. Characters need to occasionally step into the unreal, become way larger than life, and play cardboard cutouts well enough to enthrall audiences. Fair enough, and I agree completely.

Yet if every single scene of a film drips with high drama, the impact is lost. Whatever flaws the first Sarkar had, one couldn't deny the characters their impact, especially the leading man. This one, in its attempt to stay on a constant high -- just like its obscenely bad, sitar-abusing background score -- is resultantly left without any scenes played normally, in the key of the relatable, and so we're never in a position to actually buy into the drama.

The premise itself is doubtlessly interesting. Opening a mega power plant in Maharashtra could hugely benefit the people, but its very setting up requires the displacement of over 40,000 villagers. It is a believable conflict, that of the MNC splitting up political musclemen father and son over this issue. Both Sarkar (Amitabh Bachchan) and son Shankar (Abhishek) take the opportunity to give pro-Maharashtra speeches calculated toward the applause from the MNS audiences, in different directions. Sarkar wants the villages protected, Shankar is looking towards the long run. And so begins a conflict.

Surely an idea with potential, but suddenly -- just as Shankar's campaign to rally around villagers gathers steam and he begins sharing how-I-killed-my-brother confidences with inexplicably inquisitive businesswoman Anita Rajan (Aishwarya Rai [Images]) while a local leader called Sanjay Somji (Rajesh Shringapure) clad in Raj Thackeray spectacles begins to turn a ridiculously fickle junta against him -- that whole conflict is mooted as we return to Mumbai and everyone, literally everyone, starts shooting at one another.

Soon it's a bloodbath, but a completely unengaging and thanda battle, where corpses and kidnappings come too easy and the lines remain persistently cheesy. There is, as said, the odd moment of quirky humour, like when Chander (Ravi Kale) proudly points out land he owns to the boss's son Shankar, or when a frantic phone conversation abruptly ends with the words 'You too,' a jibe at that 'take care' we bandy about ubiquitously these days. Priceless moments, but are found here as rare as rationality.

The rest of the time we have to make do with ludicrous plot devices like a mute, gloved killer, straight out of a B-grade horror movie.

The acting is solid, and, as is the norm, Ramu surrounds his principal actors with a fine supporting cast. Kale and Govind Namdeo do very well, Shringapure is effective, Sayaji Shinde [Images] and Victor Banerjee are tragically underused, while Tanisha isn't half bad with clothes on.

Aishwarya Rai, for all the talk of being redefined as an actress, doesn't have anything to do really, besides saying a line about a power plant survey in English and then, teary eyed, listening to men talk. Abhishek Bachchan [Images] continues to simmer, and while he does pick up a shovel and do his own dirty spadework, the character never quite comes to the boil. His job profile here is frowning sans emotion, be it at a sarcastic old politician or the death of his wife.

Amitabh Bachchan [Images] does well, but only in that standard-issue sort of way. He has a great moment early on when red gulal is flung onto him by a girl too young to be intimidated by him, and it takes a lot for an actor to speak lines this pithy and pretend he means it. There are occasionally good one liners, like there being a fine line between zealous loyalty and betrayal, but somewhere down the line this Sarkar character too suffers from confusion and turns schoolmasterly as he tutors Ash (who is some vague live-in visitor at the Nagre residence, it seems) in the Art Of War. It's almost enough to remind you of his headmaster role in Mohabbatein, and the penultimate Sarkar Raj frame -- conversations with photographs, believe you me -- is far too close to that film for comfort.

This is a watchable, entirely forgettable film, and fans of the original are advised to rewatch that one again.

Ramu has concentrated far too much on the angles and the light -- both of which succeed only in making you think you're watching a film without clarity -- and not enough on the focus. Sadly, I'm not just talking camera.

Rediff Rating:
2/5

** But they always have both versions of reviews, extremely Negative and Falsely Positive!

But Guru Moran calls it HISTORY MAKING!

Raja sen (the reviewer on rediff) has lost the plot...as he is da only person on the Internet who has said dat the film was not good. Otherwise the film has had a positive response in terms of reviews. Anyway I could not care less about what critics think of the film. I think its film of the year so far....if u guys liked Sarkar, then u will love this. I recommend you guys to watch in cinemas.