A Potpourri of Vestiges Review
By Murtaza Ali Khan
After a long wait, The Accidental Prime Minister has finally released. Directed by Vijay Ratnakar Gutte and written by a team of writers led by Mayank
Tewari, The Accidental Prime Minister is based on the 2014 memoir of the samename by Sanjaya Baru who served as India’s former two time Prime Minster Manmohan
Singh’s media advisor during his first term from 2004 to 2009 under the
Congress led United Progressive Alliance. The film stars Anupam Kher and
Akshaye Khanna as Manmohan Singh and Sanjaya Baru, respectively. It costars Anupam
Kher, Akshaye Khanna, Suzanne Bernert, Aahana Kumra and Arjun Mathur.
The Accidental Prime
Minister stops short of
vindicating former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh despite some conscious efforts
to present him in good light at crucial junctures in the film. As a film, it
seems to suffer from budgetary constraints. The low production values become
the film's biggest undoing. The film fails to leverage the language of cinema
to present the events in Sanjaya Baru's book and merely settles to retell the book's account as plainly as possible.
This can be partly attributed to the director's inexperience at handling the
complex subject matter at hand. As much as I hate saying this but the film's
creative team could have learnt a lot from how Hollywood approaches political
films. Even a series like House of Cards has so much more to offer. I mean a
lead character's repetitive breaking of the fourth wall alone can't make a film
engaging for its entire duration. Yes, Akshaye Khanna tries his best to add
color to the boredom that surrounds the PMO helmed by a soft-spoken Prime
Minister like Manmohan Singh. Akshaye Khanna succeeds in getting into the
skin of the character and delivers his best performance in years. But the
performances alone can't save a half-baked film like this one.
All those interested in Baru's account would be
much better off reading the book than Gutte's adaptation of it.
Rating: 4/10
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