When you see a huge star cast like Naseeruddin Shah, Nana Patekar, Manoj Bajpai, Arjun Rampal and Ranbir Kapoor, you do expect the bar to be risen very high especially when the backdrop is a intense political drama.
So lets start with what according to me makes a movie its worth
-Storyline
-Scenes
-Performances
-Summary
Storyline
Well the movie starts off well and doesn’t waste time in getting to the point. Starts with Bharati Pratap (Nikhila Trikha) going to the temple and offering food to the poor for a cause that is unknown to everyone except her adopted brother Brij Gopal (Nana Patekar). The cause started many years ago when Bharatis father Ramnath Rai (Darshan Jariwala) is contesting a election and the leftist leader Bhaskar Sanyal (Naseeruddin Shah) standing up to him. Surprisingly, Bharati Pratap is committed to the cause of the leftist leader and supports him. Their association leads into a passionate interlude causing Bhaskar Sanyal to go through a guilt trip realizing he lost his control and gave in. Repentance and remorse force him to leave. Finally Bharati is pregnant and she gives birth to a child which is taken by Brij Gopal and left near some river bank. Bharati is married into another political family to Chandraprakash (Chetan Pandit), younger brother of Bhanu Pratap (Jehangir Khan).
Many years later, the kid grows up in the Dalit community winning a kabbadi tournament for them named Sooraj Kumar (Ajay Devgan). A guy who doesnt care for the upper class and drives the Mercedes Benz rash amongst the thin lanes of Azad Nagar and doesnt care of the mud and dirt it gathers. This upsets his Dad Ram Charitar (Dayashankar Pandey) who works as a driver of Bharati Prataps family. The dad is getting late to pick from the airport Samar Pratap (Ranbir Kapoor) the youngest son of the two sons Bharati Pratap has. The elder is Prithvi Pratap (Arjun Rampal) a fiery outspoken political young leader. On the other side is Bhanu Prataps eldest son Veerendra Pratap (Manoj Bajpai) who thinks no one take the party presidentship from him and he is born to rule.
So essentially a clash between 2 cousins to begin with. The movie takes it first turn when Bhanu Pratap suffers a massive heart attack while giving a speech. Veerendra Pratap and Prithvi Pratap see their opportunity to lead the party here and start making the moves. Brij Gopal smells a rat and manages to talk to Bhanu Pratap in coma and make him realize that the youth will take this to the gutters. So Bhanu Pratap hands the reins of the party to his younger brother Chandraprakash which means that his elder son Prithvi will get the lions share of responsibilities. This enrages Veerendra Pratap and to counter them, he gathers Sooraj Kumar under his wings seeing the fire in his belly. From this point, the movie become a cat and mouse game of who makes the winning moves to come into power as the CM. The situations that cause turns and twists between the 2 contenders is the crux of this movie and interesting part is how Samar Pratap , a guy who never had any political ambitions gets sucked into the game.
Scenes:
To me, the scenes are the defining moments within the movie which really keep you glued to the seat
-Bhaskar Sanyal telling Ramnath Rai "Keep the bread in the plate of the poor and we will pick any flag, red or black"
-Veerendra Prataps challenging the party decisions and the process to elect candidates.
-Sooraj telling his father "The livelihood of the rich is dependent on us, our livelihood is not dependent on them"
-Brij Gopal sweetly countering Veerendra Prataps verbal volleys in party meetings and maintaining how democratic we are in our process
-Veerendra Pratap getting Sooraj Kumar as candidate in the party to get a election ticket.