Film Review: Vanvaas
Rating: 1.5/5
Director Anil Sharma's latest venture, Vanvaas, falls short of expectations despite a decent storyline and a good performance by Nana Patekar. While the predictable narrative might resonate with senior citizens, the lack of novelty and emotional depth makes this film unbearable for younger audiences to connect with.
Utkarsh Sharma, the lead actor, delivers a better performance compared to his previous films, Genius and Gadar 2. However, he is overshadowed by his father Anil Sharma's direction, highlighting the need for Utkarsh to step out of his father’s shadow and establish himself as a credible actor.
The production values are decent, but the film falters in other critical areas. The music is uninspiring, with all songs falling flat. Poor editing further diminishes the overall impact. Additionally, the film’s runtime of 2 hours and 40 minutes feels unnecessarily stretched, testing the audience's patience.
The film is devoid of entertainment, and the emotions fail to touch the heart. Anil Sharma’s direction feels outdated. Most parts of the film are boring and tedious to watch. He tries to give his son Utkarsh the look of Sunny Deol, while heroine Simrat Kaur imitates Amrita Rao. The rest of the cast fails to deliver, and Anil Sharma could not create even a single memorable scene in the 160-minute runtime. Shamelessly, characters like Veeru and Mausi from Sholay have been copied, along with their
Dialogues.
At some points, the dialogues are in English, making them inaccessible to common masses.
With a limited number of screens and shows, Vanvaas faces an uphill battle at the box office and is likely to fail miserably to recover its costs, especially with Pushpa 2 continuing its strong run into its third week. First-day box office collections are likely to be below ₹1 crore.
Overall, Vanvaas is a mediocre attempt that fails to leave a lasting impression. It’s hard to recommend this film, even to loyal fans of Nana Patekar and Anil Sharma.
Regards,
Narendra Gupta