Riwayat Review In Short
A NGO activist married to a rich tycoon battles against age old traditions of female infanticide in a remote village despite opposition from all quarters.
Riwayat Review Verdict
Though the story is quite touching, the direction, screenplay and other elements prove to be its undoing…
Riwayat Review Story Plot
Anita (Samapika Debnath), a socially active young woman who works for a NGO, gets married to her beau Raj (Khalid Siddique), a rich business tycoon’s son. Though she is disturbed by the dysfunctional members of her maternal family, she soon gets involved in the problems of a remote village named Gangapur, where a female child is considered to be a burden that must be eliminated without much hesitation.
Though Anita faces opposition from everyone from policemen to the village sarpanch to the resident doctor Gupta (Rajendra Gupta), not to mention her own in-laws, who want her to take up her duties as the family bahu, she battles on to provide justice for her Gangapur maid Radha (Gauri Kulkarni), whose female child is killed by Radha’s alcoholic husband Gangaram (Aditya Lakhia).
How Anita manages to fight for her ideals, with the help of a good friend Kabir (Narendra Jha), forms the rest of the plot.
Riwayat Review Performances
The performances in the movie are quite mediocre and with the exception of veteran actor Rajendra Gupta, who plays a cynical PHC (Public Health Centre) doctor and Saurabh Dubey, who plays the stern patriarch Girdhar, the rest of the cast does not impress at all. The film also has other actors like Achint Kaur and Salil Ankola in short roles. Sayaji Shinde is also seen in a cameo in the film as a lawyer and we sure hope we could have got to see a lot more of him throughout the movie…
Riwayat Review Direction
Though director Vijay Patkar has his heart in the right place, the same cannot be said for his talents. From the first scene onwards, Riwayat comes across as a product of poor execution and an unimaginative screen-play. Though the issue of female infanticide is quite topical, especially after Aamir Khan took up the issue in his talk show Satyamev Jayate, the film fails to touch your heat-strings, so to say…
Riwayat Final Word
Like mentioned before, though the film deals with a sensitive and topical issue, Riwayat proves to be an avoidable fare, because of its poor execution and weak storyline…