Lal Bahadur Shasthri

When you look at the conventional styles of movies, Lal Bahadur Shasthri has removed a lot of stereo types like unnecessary songs and totally irrelevant scenes. Well that has helped the movie to reduce its run time to 110 minutes (less than two hours) which I believe was the biggest positive of this harmless charmless cinema.

The plot basically revolves around the life of this character called Lal. The good at heart innocent man is struggling to get a job. The movie focuses on the events that happen on the day when he decides to go to Ernakulam to meet someone for a discussion regarding the job. During this journey he meets a few people who eventually became a very close part of his life.

The level of preaching and the kind of “goodness” associated with the main characters is something that makes the movie less charming. I am not saying that they should have been extremely crooked or something, but the sub plots and concept kind of get stereo typed with these used out ideas. The chase behind the lottery at times creates laughter (like the scene where Shastri meets the boy) and sometimes it is overdone. The movie never fizzles into a nonsense category, but it doesn’t really succeed in showing the depth of certain characters and their backgrounds in a relatable way.

On screen the character of Lal doesn’t test the caliber of Jayasurya and we have seen him in similar avatar before. Nedumudi Venu and Aju Varghese were good in their characters. Leading lady Sandra Simon just gives a mild smile here and there. Child actor Minon did an impressive performance.

Rejishh Midhila should have made the treatment less dramatic. His idea to present the lottery thing without too much haywire was good, but the cheesy feel of the script makes it less appealing. Dialogues are okay and as I said the screenplay can’t define certain characters with depth. Music and background score were slightly disappointing from Bijibal. Cinematography and edits are just about okay.

Overall Lal Bahadur Shastri is watchable. It won’t test your sense and patience, but at the same time it won’t create an impact it should have created. My rating is a generous 2.5/5 for debutant director Rejishh Midhila’s Lal Bahadur Shasthri.