Actions just not seen before. Review on Ghajini (2008)

Being Amir fan, I saw Ghajini on day one(preview) but come out with a mixed feelings. The story is of a business tycoon Sanjay Singhsnia(Amir), who falls in love with an ordinary girl, Kalpana(Asin). Kalpana was always helping people in need, and that landed her into trouble when she helped few girls to freedom from a gang of body part traders(Ghajini). She and Sanjay were beaten, killing Kalpana, but Sanjay survived, but lost his memory. He was badly hit on his head, so his brain was damaged, and could only remember things for not more then 15 minutes. The story is of Sanjay, and what methods he used to overcome his problem to remind himself of his love, and to take revenge from the killers.

Fist the good part of the movie. It is extremely difficult for us to understand what any person will feel and go through if he can not remember anything for more than 15 minutes, and the director has been able to give us some feeling about it. I tried to imagine this condition for myself, and found it so horrifying that I would better die than live. The pain demonstrated by Amir was amazing. I salute director Murugadoss and Amir for bringing the emotions out so effectively. It takes lot of courage for a person to be in such a situation to live life normally, and the way Sanjay found ways to live by remembering day to day activities, including remembering where his house is, and remind himself of his purpose, that is taking revenge from his love’s killers, is amazing. The first half was made interesting by the Kalpana with her joyful interactions with Sanjay. And turning of a simple man to a ‘animal’ was also shown commendably. The actions were terrific, just not seen in Indian cinema before.

However, the movie is not without it’s flows. First, the romance between Sanjay and Kalpana does not click… I don’t feel any good chemistry between the two. Kalpana accepting Sanjay’s love just because she did not have alternatives, does not look genuine… And showing Kalpana as a ‘good-girl’ doing good to people looked like taken from movies from 1960’s… it did not create any emotions. Also, if she spread wrong stories about her and Sanjay’s romance to get attention did not convey good about her character. When Sanjay meets Kalpana for the first time, she tells all the stories to a stranger, did not make sense. And he did not say anything to her about the lie she had got printed in magazines, did not make sense too.

In climax, Sanjay had a rod in his abdomen by Ghajini, but survived, but he had killed a man instantly with a tap before. Sanjay killed so many people, but he was not arrested. Jiah was just very irritating. Her role was also not handled well, about her developing interest in Sanjay, and her passion to pursue him was not developed adequately, so it did not click.

For a hero shown so strong, the climax would have been great if the villain was also equally strong. But he was thrown like a leaf here and there. On the whole, the screenplay was not written well to bring right emotions at right time. And I think this has affected the movies appeal, which could have been a masterpiece.

I think I am evaluating the movie too much, as my wife enjoyed the movie quite a lot, so I think, it can be watched once.