Sherdil The Pilibhit Saga movie review: Pankaj Tripathi deserved a better film

Based mostly on a real story, ‘Sherdil, The Pilibhit Saga’ options an idealistic village ‘sarpanch’ who hits upon a weird plan to avoid wasting his village from utter destitution. It includes him going into the dense jungle searching for a mighty predator armed with nothing however his disarming conviction that there’ll, in truth, be such an encounter, and that will probably be deadly.

There’s a patent sincerity of goal to this Srijit Mukherji movie, which borrows its central thought from actual life: when people are so determined that they’re on the level of throwing away their lives, and callous authorities officers will do nothing to assist, what’s the means ahead? But it surely doesn’t assist that saying one thing so essential is so stretched in a two-hour movie which is basically not even a two-hander, however a close to solo act.

The foolhardy Gangaram (Pankaj Tripathi) bids inconsolable spouse Lajo (Sayani Gupta), two kids and an previous mom a ultimate farewell earlier than taking off to the forest. Quickly, he bumps right into a poacher (Neeraj Kabi) sporting lengthy dreadlocks, who goes by the title of Jim Ahmed, channelling Corbett, who else. They usually go roaming within the gloaming, at one time sitting all the way down to a primary meal wherein the vegetarian Gangaram is launched to flesh, at one other crouching near the bottom when their tummies run, an exercise Gangaram calls ‘mal tyaagna’ with a straight face. After which they arrive head to head with the striped four-legged majestic beast, the lord of the jungle. Will Gangaram’s plan succeed?

Solely somebody like Pankaj Tripathi may have pulled off this function, with a sincerity which doesn’t really feel practised. His Gangaram is the soul of the movie, which depends far an excessive amount of on its lead character. Everybody else appears as if they’re taking part in an element. Achieved effectively, this might have been a powerful satire, nevertheless it turns right into a listless saga, which lifts solely somewhat by its pretty music, scored by Shantanu Moitra. The songs, one sung by KK whom we sadly misplaced lately, deserved a greater movie.