0.5 Star (out of 4)
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Sarzameen marks the absurd nadir of Hindi terrorism dramas. Bollywood producers: please, give us a break.
In many ways, Sarzameen is no different from other recent terrorism movies. A shadowy organization intent on taking innocent lives forces a lone, hyper-competent soldier to choose between love and duty to his country. But the team behind Sarzameen — first-time feature director Kayoze Irani (actor Boman Irani’s son) and debutant screenwriters Soumil Shukla and Arun Singh — uses every genre trope in a way that exhibits zero understanding of how the audience will react. It’s like if you punched someone and expected them to thank you for it.
The super soldier in Sarzameen is Colonel Vijay Menon (Prithviraj Sukumaran). He’s the kind of guy who can take out dozens of heavily armed terrorists with just a pistol. Vijay’s wife Meher (Kajol) adores him, and his young teenage son Harman (Ronav Parihar) looks up to him.
Thing is, Vijay loathes his son. Timid Harman stutters when he speaks and gets beaten up for not being athletic, to Vijay’s mortal embarrassment.
Vijay gets a chance to show just how much he detests Harman when the boy is kidnapped. The group holding him wants to exchange the boy for two imprisoned terrorists, brothers Qaabil (K. C. Shankar) and Aabil (Rohed Khan). Vijay is convinced that Qaabil is an alias for the mastermind “Mohsin,” but someone claiming to be the real Mohsin offers to turn themselves in following the prisoner swap. Vijay is skeptical, but desperate Meher asks him, “What if you’re wrong?”
At the swap — which involves releasing the brothers into a shallow streambed while Harman is left elsewhere, out of sight — Vijay has flashbacks to his swearing-in ceremony as a young soldier. Overwhelmed by fears that he’s acting unpatriotically, Vijay starts shooting at the brothers as they walk away. Vijay kills Aabil, but Qaabil escapes. The Colonel returns home to Meher with a sad look on his face, having doomed their only child to death.
During every scene with Harman, Vijay behaves like a complete jerk. Vijay lets his son be killed not because of “patriotism” — which the film uses as a nebulous catch-all concept — but because of ego, cementing him as an all-time cinema a-hole. How Irani, Shukla, and Singh don’t see Vijay’s actions as irredeemable is the story’s biggest mystery. Vijay can’t come back from this — or it would take storytellers much more experienced than this trio to redeem him.
Yet, eight years later, Vijay gets his second chance. A young man rescued with other hostages says his name is Harman Vijay Singh (Ibrahim Ali Khan). Turns out Harman wasn’t killed, merely tortured for years while living with the terrorists. Of course Vijay doesn’t believe this is his son. This “Harman” does one-armed pushups and doesn’t stutter, so he must be a fake. Meher — who inexplicably stayed with Vijay after he supposedly got their son killed — can tell this is her son, and DNA proves it. Harman lives.
The acting in Sarzameen is generally not terrible. Khan seems bewildered as Harman, but that’s actually appropriate. Kajol is fine. Sukumaran doesn’t do anything to soften Vijay’s rough edges, but I’m not sure he could have salvaged things.
All of Sarzameen‘s problems stem from a story that cannot work as written. Genre clichés are thrown together in the service of too many plot twists. But there’s no substance behind any of it, no consideration given to character motivations. It’s a film about “patriotism,” but what do the filmmakers think patriotism means?
The filmmakers deliberately refuse to define the terrorists’ objectives, lest they accidentally portray them sympathetically. But, by making Vijay the world’s worst dad, they make the terrorist outfit look good by comparison. Qaabil is a supportive and nurturing leader, understanding the value of providing directionless young men with a place to belong. Contrast that with Vijay’s disappointment that Harman wasn’t born wielding a machine gun, not to mention Vijay’s commanding officer’s (Boman Irani in cameo) penchant for needlessly dangerous publicity stunts that put civilians at risk. Which outfit comes off looking better?
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