LE GAYA SADDAM | 3 November, 2012

Sher Khan (Chirag Patil) lives with his grandfather, Saddam Khan (Raghubir Yadav) who is a neem hakim. Sher Khan is in love with Munni (Sufi Sayyad) but so are many other young men in the village in which they live. His grandfather gets the two married but in a fit of rage one day, Sher Khan divorces Munni by uttering the word ‘talaq’ thrice. He soon repents and wants her back as his wife. Munni, too, wants to unite with Sher Khan. Fearing that the rest of the village is lusting for Munni, Sher Khan asks his own grandfather to marry Munni, spend a night with her and divorce her the very next day, thereby paving the way for him to remarry her.

Saddam gets married to Munni but refuses to divorce her after the man­datory night spent together. This agitates Sher Khan so much that he ultimately hires a contract killer to murder his grandfather.

What happens thereafter? Does Sher Khan actually get his grandfather killed? Why is Saddam not granting Munni divorce? Does he grant divorce finally? Is the divorce granted out of fear?

Amjad Khan’s story may be a satirical comment on the Muslim law but the satire doesn’t come through. The screenplay, also penned by Amjad Khan, is so ridiculous that rather than a comment on the Muslim law, the film looks like a drama in bad taste. For one, the town in which Sher Khan lives looks like a town full of sexually frustrated people, and Munni seems to be the only girl in that town. Sad­dam marrying his grandson’s divorced wife and then not agreeing to divorce her leaves a bad taste in the mouth. The very fact that he does not consummate his marriage with Munni should’ve been enough for her to not despair, but this point is conveniently overlooked. Instead, both, Sher Khan and Munni, are shown to be desperate to be with one another. The entire track of Sher Khan hiring a contract killer to eliminate his grandfather looks childish, silly and stupid. The behavi­our of Halimbhai (Amjad Khan), the contract killer, is so weird that someone could die of embarrassment on being told that he is a contract killer. The writer may have kept the contract killer’s character the way he did to create comedy but that comedy fails miserably. Equally irritating is the comedy about Saddam waking up in the morning doing weird things.

Although Munni is the cynosure of all eyes, the romantic portions in the film are pathetic. It would not be wrong to say that Amjad Khan’s script is ridiculously kiddish. Note, for instance, how Munni reacts when her hus­band, Sher Khan, offers to take her out. She turns down his offer by saying something to the effect that it wouldn’t look proper as people would ogle at them since they were newly married. And the same Munni had no qualms about openly romancing Sher Khan before marriage! Shouldn’t the marriage have given the couple the licence to roam about freely? There are such awkward and illogical mom­ents by the dozen! Even Amjad Khan’s dialogues are, if one may use the term, pedestrian. The location, at regular intervals, shifts to the jungle for no rhyme or reason.

Raghubir Yadav tries hard to get into the skin of the character, but the character of Saddam serves only to underline the actor’s desperation to be noticed. His acting may be good but the role does not do justice to the actor’s talent. Chirag Patil is no hero material and can hardly act! Sufi Say­yad is embarrassingly poor as Munni. Shahbaz Baweja, as police officer Shahbaz, is okay. But why does he go to the police station in a lungi instead of the uniform trousers? Amjad Khan’s comedy is terribly poor. Umesh Gautam fails as Billu. Sudesh Kaul looks more like a roadside Romeo than the village mukhiya he plays. Pravin Jain (as Gaffur Miyan), Sd. Irshaad Ali Khan (as Kalim), Tejas, Zeeshan, Sahil, Jack and Chinmay (all five as Halimbhai’s punters), Tapti Chakrabarty (as Saddam’s wife), Reshma Siddique (as Munni’s mother), Zahir (as the bangle man), Shaikh Hamid-ul-haq (as Maulana) and the others lend weak support.

Amjad Khan’s direction is juvenile. It does nothing to add to the insipid script. Music (Amjad Khan and Jai­deep Chowdhary) is functional. Lyrics (Amjad Khan, Arafat Mehmood and Bhaswati Chakrabarty) are commonplace. Picturisation of the songs (choreography by Himanshu, Urvi and Raju Ray) is weak. Jaideep Chowdhary’s background music is loud. Madhu S. Rao’s camerawork is routine. Parvez Khan’s action and stunts are nothing to shout about. Pravin Angre’s editing barely passes muster.

On the whole, Le Gaya Saddam is a dull show all the way and has almost nil chances at the box-office.

Released on 2-11-’12 at Eros (daily 1 show) and other cinemas of Bombay thru Mirchi Movies. Publicity: quite alright. Opening: poor. …….Also released all over. Opening was very weak everywhere.