Monday, November 3, 2014

Review: Roar - Tigers of the Sundarbans


Cast: Abhinav Shukla, Himarsha Venkatsamy, Anchit Kaur, SUbrat Dutta, Nora Fatehi, Ali Quli Mirza, Aadil Chahal, Varinder Singh Ghuman, Aaran Chaudhary, Pranay Dixit, Pulkit Jawahar
Direction: Kamal Sadanah
Production: Abis Rizvi
Written By: Kamal Sadanah, Abis Rizvi
Cinematographer: Michael Watson
Editor: Kamal Sadanah, Muzzammil Nasir
Music: John Stewart BGM
Release Date: 31st October, 2014
Language: Hindi
Duration: 2 hours 03 minutes

Roar- Tigers of the Sundarbans, an absolutely unconventional movie by debutant director Kamal Sadanah, had the potential to be a great flick. The movie has some stunning shots of the natural beauty of the Sundarbans (Bengal). A plot with man-animal relationship. Ang Lee gave us a beautiful movie Life of Pi where this relationship was explored and picturized / presented in a very unique manner. Roar lacked a coherent script / presentation.

Uday, a young photojournalist, who is in Sunderbans to make a documentary on wild lives, rescues a white tiger cub trapped by a poacher. Uday brings the cub to his place where he was staying in the village. The villages get panicked when they see Uday carrying the cub along with him. Anchit Kaur (an officer placed in village) takes the cub away. Uday gets attacked and killed by the mother Royal Bengal Tigress on that night. Uday’s brother Pandit (Abhinav Shukla), captain of an elite commando team, comes in search of his brother’s body. He gets neither the support of the villagers nor Anchit's. Anchit refuses  to get the search operation done for Uday's body due to the danger zones of the forest. Pandit decides to search for Uday’s body on his own and also find out the Royal tigress so as to kill her. He gathers his commando team and sets off for his mission to kill the tigress. Uday’s local guide Madhu and a forest tracker Jhumpa joins Pandit for this mission.

What follows thereafter forms the story. The team met with lot of challenges on their way. Despite being trained soldiers, they find helpless at times in that land which belonged to wild creatures. White tigress eluded them and also manipulated them into her territory. Apart from tigers / tigress, snakes and crocodiles were also in the scene. Ultimately the hunter turns out to become the hunted. What happens towards the end? Could Pundit kill the tigress? Was his team intact even towards the end? Who wins ultimately? 

Certain scenes are intriguing and also difficult to watch: a couple getting manually covered up by millions of honeybees as part of their ritual, thousands of snakes following Pandit’s gang etc.

Roar has definitely some great visuals in it, with amazing shots of the landscape.

Roar – Tigers of the Sundarbans although doesn’t roar, it is unconventional in nature.


Rating: 2 /5

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