By Shevaal Singh
R…Rajkumar directed by Prabhudheva is what an average movie goer wouldn’t really want to see in the current era of cinema. It feels like its a product of your typical 90’s film. Too much masala and less on substance! The film starring Shahid Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha and Sonu Sood, R…Rajkumar has been shot in a rural setting. The filmmaker tried to cash in on the latest trend of showing a street-smart ‘road side Romeo’, dressed in kitschy shirts who falls in love with a good girl. Remember one of 2013’s biggest failures at the box office ‘Besharam’? It’s similarly just as bad. It makes me ponder on what made Prabhudheva even come up with a film like R…Rajkumar that has nothing but headache to offer? The movie becomes loud, obnoxious and then reaches a point of almost becoming annoying.
Rajkumar (Shahid) is a street smart orphan guy from Dhartipur, a feared place ruled by two drug mafias. The purpose of his visit is however established towards the end of the film but it doesn’t convince you at all. The moment Rajkumar steps into Dhartipur, he sees the two warring gangs headed by Shivraj (Sonu Sood) and Parmar (Ashish Vidyarthi) indulge in a gun battle. Here he comes across the love of his life- Chanda (Sonakshi Sinha) – who he tries to save from fierce bullets. Rajkumar joins Shivraj’s gang and instantly becomes his blue eyed boy. Shivraj uses Rajkumar to befriend his rival gang so that he could carry out his drug deal without hassles.
Shahid Kapoor, who has earlier essayed meaningful roles, has somehow let his career graph go erratic by choosing films that turn out to be a complete dampener. He is seen trying too hard to fit into a character that is outrageously different from his own. Both Sonakshi and Shahid have tremendous potential and perhaps more films like ‘Kaminey’ and ‘Lootera’ can help them accelerate their somewhat motionless careers. The audiences would certainly love to see Sonu Sood essaying a variety of characters and not just the typical rustic baddie that he has repeated. It felt good to see Ashish Vidyarthi back in Bollywood but perhaps the choice of his comeback character could have been much better.
The songs apart from ‘Gandi Baat’ and ‘Sari Ki Fall’have are not been remarkable and even the background score sounded infantile. `R…Rajkumar’ is an imprecise effort to produce a film with a diversity of emotions, but sadly you will find no trace of any kind of emotion, not even humour. The filmmaker has failed to make even a single moment where the movie viewer connects to any of the movie characters. For instance, in the climax action sequence, Rajkumar gets badly beaten up by Shivraj. Instead of empathising with the hero getting roughed up so miserably, the audience seems to be waiting for the “drama” to end. The dialogues will remind you of the legendary Rajinikanth but the panache is missing. Rajkumar is often heard saying “be silent else I will get violent”. After watching the film your well-balanced being would have been put to rest and you would take his advice very seriously and stay silent. Shahid Kapoor fans may enjoy seeing their favourite hero in this avatar yet others should not attempt watching this film unless they’re seriously bored. I’m going with 4/10 for this loud , obnoxious and over the top , drowning in melodrama film.