Sooryavanshi

After a point, it becomes difficult to call a particular director’s movie as unimpressive as he has established himself as the director of a specific kind of movie. Sooryavanshi from Rohit Shetty is one more cop-action thriller that just wants to create loudness inside the theaters. Rohit Shetty has conditioned his audience over the years through the same color-rich stuff that you set the benchmark of expectations pretty much on the floor. So in that sense, Sooryavanshi being that template film isn’t really a disappointment.

Mumbai ATS officer Veer Sooryavanshi is our main protagonist. We are introduced to him as he captures Lashkar’s Indian Commander in one operation held in Jaisalmer. But the ATS gets the latest info from Delhi that something huge is about to happen in Mumbai. ATS knows that only 400 kilos of the one-ton RDX were used in 1993 blasts, and the rest is still hidden somewhere, and they suspect the use of that for this big operation. The efforts of Sooryavanshi and the team to stop this from happening are what we see in this movie.

As I said, Rohit Shetty has always made it clear that he isn’t making films for critical appreciation. His aim is to get the whistles of the single-screen audience who are willing to laugh and scream at anything. Sooryavanshi is a script written precisely, keeping in mind that the two hours and 45 minutes of its runtime should be deafening for the viewer. The story that we can figure out watching the trailer is what we get to see here. And the movie is basically Rohit Shetty trying to enhance that thin idea by stuffing it with stunts. And almost all those stunts have this feeling that it was forcefully added to the script.

Prior to the movie’s release, Rohit Shetty has claimed that Akshay Kumar has done 90% of the stunts by himself, and the use of CGI is minimal. But when it comes to the final output we see on screen, the processing done on those scenes to enhance its colors is so much that it becomes difficult to believe that these are real shots (I am talking about the Bangkok bike and helicopter chase sequence). Rohit Shetty’s making style remains the same, and Jomon T John’s cinematography helps the movie have a better visual attire.

In an interview, prominent writer Juhi Chaturvedi had mentioned how a producer tried to convince her that scriptwriting is a very easy process where the writer only needs to write about 45 minutes of content. The rest of one hour and 45+ minutes can be divided between introduction scenes, stunts, and songs. The writing of Sooryavanshi actually reminded me of this theory. But in Sooryavanshi, the 45 minutes of content is basically worshipping Maharashtra Police, telling Muslims what they should do to get that validation, and some cringe-worthy visuals of pseudo-secularism. A wanted terrorist flees India in 1993, leaving 600 kilos of RDX at his house, and the ATS never bothered to search that house for 17 years; interesting!

Akshay Kumar is pretty much repeating his action hero mode, and with all those action set pieces, he gets to show off his incredible acrobatic skills. Katrina Kaif as the leading lady Riya luckily isn’t a pointless addition, and they have even included her in vital moments of the movie. The remix of Tip Tip Barsa Paani (Yeah! They did it… Again!) comes at a very awkward point in the story. The character pool has so many faces with minimal screen time and standard expressions. The only actor who got a little bit of space to perform not in a monotonous way was perhaps Kumud Mishra. Ajay Devgn gets an upgrade to a military vehicle and also makes an announcement about Rohit Shetty’s next project. Simmba was a hero with an unlikable philosophy, but in Sooryavanshi, Ranveer Singh acts like the most annoying child in the kindergarten.

Some may have the argument that you should keep your brain at home for this kind of movie. If I have to do that to enjoy a film dedicated to the police force, doesn’t that feel a bit weird? If you were okay with Simmba and knows how Rohit Shetty treats his films, you might not be even reading this review. Sooryavanshi is yet another mass suicide of vehicles coordinated by Rohit Shetty.