After a gap of 6 years since his blockbuster hit Sarfarosh, John. M. Matthan was never going to find it easy, to satisfy the audiences unless he produced something extraordinarily brilliant. Unfortunately, Shikhar never scales the peaks that Sarfarosh did, and leaves the viewer with a rather dissatisfied feeling.
The film essentially revolves around Gaurav Gupta or GG (Ajay Devgan), whose character is based on that of Michael Douglas, from Oliver Stone’s classic, Wall Street. GG is a cutthroat builder, who dreams big, and is hand in glove with the ever-corrupt politicians. His aim is to build a city, which is as glossy and as good as Las Vegas, close to Mumbai. For this, with the connivance of a corrupt home minister, he chooses a remote piece of land. He manages to con the rural folk, and gets them evicted, but the biggest stumbling block to his multi-crore project is an ashram Rishivan, run by an ultra rich industrialist turned sadhu (Javed Sheikh). The Sadhu (or Guruji) as he is called, gets a stay order on the project (which would result in damage to the environment and the indiscriminate felling of trees and loss of green cover), and GG is in very deep trouble. He delves deep into the life of guruji, and comes up with a weak link—his son Jaidev (Shahid Kapoor). After befriending Jaidev, GG slowly initiates the boy, and takes him from a virtuous and pious world, into the real world of smoking, drinking, gambling and women. GG’s girlfriend Natasha (Bipasha Basu) is a mere pawn, which GG uses to ensnare Jaidev. Jaidev capitulates, and is totally smitten by GG and the new world. Using a succession of lies and deceit, GG manages to sink his teeth into Jaidev, and gets him in a tight spot. Jaidev takes up GG’s case with his father, but to no avail. Secretly in love with GG is his childhood pal and an ashram inmate, Madhavi (Amritha Rao). The rest of the story is about how Jaidev realizes his mistake, and manages to save the ashram and free himself from the clutches of GG.
John Matthan has decided to take up environmental preservation as an issue, and for this we respect and congratulate him. But the entire story and screenplay is very long-winded and tortuous, and one wishes that the editor had been more alert. Except for the title song by Jagjeet Singh, the rest of the music is off color, and the song and dance sequences only serve to further loosen the director’s grip on the story. After a very slick and satisfying Sarfarosh, Matthan’s Shikhar is a relative letdown. Of the cast, Shahid Kapoor is first rate, as the innocent boy lured into the temptations of the world by a cruel, crooked builder. Ajay Devgan is his usual dependable self. Bipasha Basu and Amritha Rao do justice to their roles. But the film is very often superficial, and one feels that the director rarely connects to the viewer. Also, environmental issues are very important today, as is the case with the builder-politician nexus, and hence one wishes that the director had spent more footage on this, than on foreign locales and fashion shows. Still, the fact that someone is willing to put his money into making a statement on the state of the ecosystem and environment, which is being thoroughly destroyed and damaged by elements with no regards for anything besides power and money, is in itself commendable. If one were to cross Page 3 and Swades, one would probably get a Shikhar, though unfortunately Shikhar comes nowhere near the technical excellence, and brilliant screenplay and performances of those two films.