Sarbjit Movie Review: A Touching And Tragic Tale

The tragic story of Sarabjit Singh, an Indian farmer, who was convicted on charges of espionage by the Pakistani government, had moved every Indian a few years back and Omung Kumar, who made his debut as a director with Mary Kom, has brought the story to life on the silver screen with Sarbjit.

The story revolves around Dalbir Kaur (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), whose brother Sarbjit (Randeep Hooda), strays across the Indo-Pak border and gets arrested and charged for espionage by the Pakistani government.

However, Dalbir, who refuses to let her brother die in a dingy prison in Pakistan, decides to wage a battle for more than two decades with the support of Sarbjit's wife Sukhpreet (Richa Chadha) and a Pakistani lawyer Awais Sheikh (Darshan Kumaar).

Randeep Hooda, who had recently wowed us with his performance in Laal Rang, ups the ante this time and delivers his most powerful performance ever with this film. His sad smile, his wince, his despair and the sorrow in his eyes, will definitely bring a lump to your throat. Hooda is raw, real and riveting as Sarbjit Singh and the actor will simply blow your mind away with his performance. There is this one scene in which Sarbjit, who is languishing in solitary confinement, tells his lawyer, “No one comes to meet me here, please sit with me for two minutes," and he totally owns you in that scene.

On her part, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, who plays Dalbir Kaur, seems to have put her heart and soul in her role and has delivered an intense and powerful performance, but at times, she tends to let the volume of her voice speak more than her performance and we wish she could have dialed it down a bit. Richa Chadha doesn't have a meaty role as such while Darshan Kumaar, who makes an entry in the second half, impresses as the earnest and idealistic lawyer.

Omung Kumar certainly had his heart in the right place when he made Sarbjit and one can see that a lot of emotions have been put in the story. But there are places where the film tends to go a bit overboard in the melodrama department and there is way too much 'rona dhona'. There is a fine line between emotions and melodrama and the film tiptoes across the line at times, which might prove to be a dampener. The story of Sarbjit is quite tragic and maybe Omung felt that a certain melodrama is required to hammer the point home, but Kumar forgot that restraint can make a bigger and better impact in certain situations.

Another issue we have with this film is the way it stretches in the second half of the film and some crisp editing would have surely worked wonders for the film, which goes on and on after the interval.

Nevertheless, Sarbjit is a touching and tragic tale, which needs to be shared with the world.