Shikhar - Movie Review

Published: October 2, 2009

By JENNIFER HOPFINGER

Starring Ajay Devgan, Shahid Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Amrita Rao, Javed Sheikh

Village life is regarded as the bastion of Indian culture and values—and it’s slowly being eroded by urbanization as villagers are lured to cities by the promise of opportunities. Unfortunately, most end up living in worse conditions than before. Shikhar tells the story of this problematic trend.

 

Ruthless real-estate developer G.G. (Ajay Devgan) sets out to turn an idyllic rural area into a metropolis, but there’s an ashram, run by a wealthy industrialist-turned-spiritual guru, smack in the middle of it, and “Guru” is dead-set on stopping G.G. (Guru is played by one of Pakistan’s top actors, Javed Sheikh, in his Bollywood debut.) After Guru survived a car accident that killed his wife, he decided to use his fortune to help the villagers who saved him, and he dedicated himself to raising orphans and protecting the environment—but he evidently didn’t do enough for the community because the poor villagers jump at the chance to sell their land. But even with the help of a corrupt government official, G.G. can’t accomplish his goal, because Guru won’t give up the ashram.

 

So G.G. strikes at Guru’s Achilles heel—his young, impressionable son Jaidev (Shahid Kapoor). Jaidev is cloyingly naïve, and so is his childhood sweetheart at the ashram, Madhavi (Amrita Rao). G.G. and his sultry girlfriend Natasha (Bipasha Basu) lead Jaidev down the path of decadence so he’ll sell his soul, bit by bit, until he sells the ashram, too.

 

But Jaidev’s descent into immorality is more like a game of teenage peer pressure, and Guru is such a passive-aggressive moral tyrant (he goes on a hunger strike when he catches two boys at his school trying cigarettes until they weep and beg for his forgiveness), one can’t blame Jaidev for wanting to have some fun. And with the exception of losing a large amount of money gambling, his rebellion is fairly benign—it’s not like he becomes debauched. As in Milton’s Paradise Lost, the devil here is unintentionally more interesting than a righteous God.

Shikhar is rated Worth Watching.

Community - News - Reviews - Commentary - About