Sikandar Movie Review: The Movie is a Tad Slow But Worth Watching Once.

The film starts capturing the serene valley and the locals going about their chores, when all of a sudden a blast takes place. A very good start to keep the audience captivated, however the momentum is lost as the movie proceeds. 'Sikandar' is about a school going boy passionate about football, played by Parzan Dastur and how he stumbles upon a gun one day, and falls prey to using it without any malicious intentions. Through the course of the movie a lot of mystery unravels slowly, to uncover how an innocent boy is exploited by people who are in position and how unintentionally someone who is gullible can fall prey to the politics played by selfish politicians. The star cast is decent with R. Madhavan as Lt. Colonel Rajesh P. Rao, Sanjay Suri as Mukhtaar Mattoo, newcomer Arunoday Singh as Zaheer Quadir and Ayesha Kapur as Nasreen. The music of the movie has been compiled by Shankar Ehsaan Loy, Justin Uday and Sandesh Shandilya. Not an out an out chart buster album but the songs of the movie are decent and hummable. The background score almost doesn't stop even for a second, though the alaap in the background sometimes gets to your head. The film has few dialogues and mostly expressions and music play an important role in the turn of events throughout the movie, making it a slow paced movie.

Madhavan is impressive but he should try to branch out from the SRK mode adding more volume to his acting. Sanjay Suri is average, Parzan is good and sticks to his trade mark expressions, he used to have as a child actor, Ayesha who has turn out to be a 'Pretty Young Thing', needs to work on her dialogue delivery and often her expressions are blank. But the surprise of the film was newcomer Arunoday Singh, who impresses in his short role. He is probably the only one to get the Kashmiri accent bang on, you wished though, that to make it look more authentic the other characters too should have worked on the local accent other than speaking Urdu. If you are an Abbas Mastan fan you may end up liking this movie as it has a lot of twists and turns, some quite predictable though. Especially the blast which takes place towards the climax, which gives an unsuspecting audience a shock.

Good cinematography by Somak Mukherjee as he explores the beauty of the valley to the optimum. The busy streets, the landscapes, the lush green spots, the foggy mornings all look quite picturesque. The story by Piyush Jha has a point and a message too, however one feels that the message is not communicated and cascaded that well. Too many abrupt happenings leave you confused at times and clueless about the turn of events, only to be sorted out in the climax. Parzan is in a dilemma throughout the movie as he is quite obsessed with his new toy, a real gun, found by him on his way to school, and how a shy boy bullied in school is overpowered by the power a gun has and his fight to overcome the bad and try to come out clean is quite commendable. A good and sensitive subject, which should have been handled more sensibly. There was more scope for the director Piyush Jha to send out the message clear and loud to the audience. Like all movies good wins over evil. The movie is a tad slow but worth watching once.