Do not believe, as director Ram Gopal Varma stresses in the press notes, that this is not influenced by Francis Ford Coppola’s, The Godfather Part II. Of course it is, and contrary to what Varma adds, it is also a sequel to his earlier Sarkar (2005). Is the film Sarkar Raj as confused as its director?

Sarkar focussed on the underworld activities of the Mumbai based Nagre family headed by the no-nonsense patriarch Subhash or ‘Sarkar’ (Amitabh Bachchan) and his two sons, Vishnu and Shankar (Abhishek Bachchan). This follow-up resumes a few years later with Sarkar and Shankar firmly entrenched as the most powerful figures in the Mumbai underworld.

When a London based company, headed by the beautiful Anita (Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan), wants to demolish some villages in the city’s suburbs in order to build ‘India’s biggest power plant’, they seek and obtain the approval of the Nagres. This decision unleashes a chain of events which leads to disastrous consequences for all.

Varma’s ‘style over substance’ filmmaking derails an interesting premise which has truthful resonance to the inner workings of the Indian mafia, gang warfare and corruption in India’s ‘maximum city’. The film is swamped in sepia tones, odd camera angles, and a loud background score. Almost every character sprouts ‘profound’ lines like: “You cannot make an omelette without breaking an egg”.

All of the above would not matter if there was some emotional engagement with these Machiavellian gangsters. Bachchan snr dominates and he is usual competent self. Bachchan jnr lacks the skill to convey menace whilst Rai-Bachchan is seriously short-changed in a cameo which requires her to arch her eyebrows, shed incessant glycerine tears and sprout lines like “Get me some tea!”

The result is that we get little insight into their steely obsession with power and even less on the effect of the Mafia’s stronghold on the lives of ordinary Bombayites in India’s richest State. Instead, the emphasis is largely on extreme close up shots of the Bachchan dynasty, and, as in The Godfather II, in their interaction with rival Mafioso and other corrupt authority figures.

This film proves firmly that Bollywood can hold its own technically against its Western counterparts. It is polished violent entertainment but to evoke comparison to Coppola’s classic is to reveal just how stylish, pretentious and ultimately shallow this Sarkar Raj is.

Director: Ram Gopal Varma, 12A, 124 min

Stars: Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan.

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