‘Prassthanam’ Review: Sanjay Dutt Came Close To Taking Saaho’s Spot Of Worst Movie Of The Year – Mashable India

This article is part of our Mash'O'Meter review series, where Mashable India delves deep and obsessively into movies and shows. Sit back, grab a cuppa. This is going to be a long ride.

I think I have to make this a habit now because the CBFC clearly doesn't know how to rate movies. Prassthanam is rated U/A i.e. this movie can be watched by anyone if they're under adult supervision. But in case you're planning to take your children, just be warned because this movie has a lot of violence, a really uncomfortable rape scene, and storytelling that can turn their mind to jelly. On a side-note, if you're planning to watch this movie alone, please bring meds because you're going to have a headache before the credits roll.

Prassthanam is written and directed by Deva Katta, who also made the 2010 original Telugu film of the same name. It stars Sanjay Dutt, Jackie Shroff, Manisha Koirala, Ali Fazal, Satyajeet Dube, and lest anyone forgets, Amyra Dastur. The story revolves around the family of politician Baldev Pratap Singh (Dutt) and how their hunger for power destroys them completely. Pretty simple, innit? Well, then watch how Katta muddles the hell out of it for over 2 hours!

How's the writing by Deva Katta?

Prassthanam features a lot of crime. But the greatest crime is committed by Katta on the female characters in the movie. I can't find a reason why he even thought of making women a part of his script. Because all they did was look pretty, whine, be someone's love interest or... umm... die. They are used as objects in order to have some form of bearing on the plot. None of them were made to take active or organic decisions. They were just there like an afterthought to make the men look more 'manly'.

SEE ALSO: Prassthanam - Cover Your Ears! There's A Lot Of Screaming In This Sanjay Dutt-Led Trailer

Coming to the men, there are just too many of them. There can only be a certain amount of testosterone in a movie until it becomes too much. There are so many men that there's no room of nuance or understandable character arcs. And that's why after every other moment, they're reduced to slapping each other, shouting into the open sky or smoking so much that it will make your lungs burn. But the worst side-effect of adding too much manliness into the screenplay is the metaphors spewed by the characters.

To make matters worse, the structure is very rickety. The movie starts in the present day. Then it goes to 6 months prior to that moment. Then it jumps to what all happened 25 years ago, all within a span of 20 minutes (approximately). And you might be thinking that that must have a purpose, right? Well, it doesn't because there's just so much plot and plot-twists that it dampens the impact of the non-linear storytelling.

How's the direction by Deva Katta?

To be honest, it was difficult to determine what Katta was going for in the first 20-minutes of Prassthanam. Because all of it was very basic stuff. There was no flavour in the scenes. Then came the moment that started Baldev's political career. In that scene, Dutt took on an entire army of goons with just two sickles and a ball of steel. People went flying into random stacks of cans. Other people were running around randomly. And I realised Katta's style of direction: swaying between over-the-top and Kyuki Saas Bhi Kabhi Thi levels of bland.

SEE ALSO: Sanjay Dutt Is Ready To Start Shooting For Munnabhai 3 But There's One Small Issue

Then there are the Dutch angles/tilts i.e. shots where the camera is kept at an angle for dramatic purposes. Most filmmakers use the Dutch tilt when they have to show something is askew or something surprising is going to happen. But Katta uses it anywhere and everywhere. Where someone like a Christopher McQuarrie, Anurag Kashyap or Quentin Tarantino can impress you with their Dutch tilts, Katta just drops them on you and leaves you with a feeling of disgust. And the reason why that feels noticeable is because the conversational scenes are shot in grey environments and cut boringly.

Finally, there are the action sequences and the item song. Some moments of Prassthanam's action sequences are good. I mean, there's potential. If Katta chooses to focus only on that and not on the plot (because clearly that's not his strong suit), I guess he can do wonders. But since he hasn't mastered it yet, they're jarring and dull all at the same time. And then there's that item song which is completely unnecessary (all item songs are unnecessary but this was particularly unnecessary). Because it felt like Katta didn't have any confidence in Satyajeet to sell the fact that his character is debauch AF.

How's the acting by the cast of Prassthanam?

If somebody makes a mash-up of every scene that Satyajeet Dubey is in and leaves the rest on the cutting room floor, I think that would make for a much, much better movie. That's because Dubey's on fire in Prassthanam. His character arc isn't something original. But the odd mix of repulsion and empathy that he brings to the screen was quite fascinating to watch. This is the second time he's starring alongside Ali Fazal, and those were clearly the highlight of the movie.

SEE ALSO: Getting Geeky with Ali Fazal

The only person who wasn't overshadowed by Dubey's powerhouse performance was Ali Fazal. The international star (FYI, he has done Furious 7, Victoria & Abdul, and is about to star alongside Gal Gadot) brought a lot of Guddu-wala charm from Mirzapur. There are two moments where he breaks down emotionally and it was too compelling to tell if he was acting or actually having a breakdown on-screen. However, the sad part is that his character is written in a way that it supplements Dutt's Baldev, thereby robbing him of a lot of solo moments to act the sh*t out of.

The rest of the cast is just horrendous. Dutt is just bad. Manisha Koirala is wasted. Jackie Shroff is wasted more than Koirala (The dude literally has a handful of lines in the movie for one of the stupidest reasons ever!). Chunky Pandey botches the hell out of the horribly written dialogues given to him. Amyra Dastur just hangs around for a bit, dances while looking beautiful and then returns at the tail end of the movie only to be forgotten all over again. In summary, it's painful.

Final verdict

Prassthanam stands atop a simple plot about how power corrupts everyone, even familial relations. But then it crumbles under the weight of an over-complicated screenplay, a tedious run-time, and too many slaps! And with a slew of mediocre to bad movies (The Zoya Factor, Rambo: Last Blood, Pal Pal Dil Ke Paas) coming in this week, it's a relief that there's Srikant Tiwari/The Family Man to get us through the weekend.

Cover artwork by Dhawal Bhanushali/Mashable India

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'Prassthanam' Review: Sanjay Dutt Came Close To Taking Saaho's Spot Of Worst Movie Of The Year - Mashable India