Bandaa Singh Chaudhary Review: Disappointing!

Bandaa Singh Chaudhary compromises on its hard realism to go after an easily digestible, mass entertainer that undoes everything that the film had set out to say, sighs Mayur Sanap.

What's worse than a bad film? A bad film with wasted potential.

Bandaa Singh Chaudhary had a lot going for it.

It was inspired by true events in the tumultuous chapter of Punjab's history, when communal violence erupted in Punjab in the 1980s.

And it has Arshad Warsi and Meher Vij as leads, who make for a very watchable on screen pairing.

Bandaa Singh Chaudhary compromises on its hard realism to go after an easily digestible, mass entertainer that undoes everything that the film had set out to say.

The film opens with Naseeruddin Shah's voiceover that narrates the radicalism brewing in Punjab in the aftermath of the 1971 War.

Arshad plays the titular character, born and raised in a Hindu Punjabi family of farmers. His harmonious life with Lalli (Vij), his Sikh wife, receives a rude shock when extremists threaten non-Sikhs to leave the state.

'These are ISI infiltrators amongst us to tamper our unity,' Bandaa says in an emotional plea to fellow villagers who increasingly turn hostile towards Bandaa and his family as tensions escalate in the region.

Determined not to leave his native land, Bandaa turns sirf ek bandaa kafi hai and strives against the militants in an utterly out of place conflict.

Director Abhishek Saxena, who also co-wrote the script with Shaheen Iqbal, had an ambition for a hard-hitting socio-political drama that does not alienate the mainstream audience.

And that is where the film gets messy.

The disconnected quality of the material hampers its impact.

We barely have any strongly worded aha moment that would stick out or a heartfelt emotion that would linger.

The result is a middling film that feels too processed about its possible pay-off.

Arshad Warsi gets to do what a hero typically does in a masala film. He breaks into abrupt song and dance, does futile slow-mo walks, heroically withstands the baddies, and doles out sermon on mulk and mazhab to occasionally remind us that he is not acting in a different film.

Barring her impressive turn in the climatic action sequence, Meher Vij has nothing substantial to do and remains in the background for most of her screen time. The two actors are charming as an on screen couple, but maybe that can be explored in another film.