Eklavya: The Royal Guard - Movie Review
Published: June 8, 2010
Starring Amitabh Bachchan, Saif Ali Khan, Vidya Balan, Sanjay Dutt, Boman Irani, Jackie Shroff
Take a brooding hero, a meek heroine, a tyrannical father, a mad sister and an old servant, put them in a medieval castle and have them contend with a family secret and the looming threat of violence, and you’ve got a classic gothic. Eklavya has all the hallmarks of the genre—which is not foreign to Bollywood—but it’s weak on two key gothic elements: terror and romance. While engagingly gorgeous and moody, the film could use more tension.
Eklavya (Amitabh Bachchan) is an aging royal guard—still an expert marksman but losing his eyesight—who is unfailing loyal to his powerless king, a feudal relic in post-Independence India. Physically virile but emotionally crushed by melancholy, Eklavya clings to his ideals of service to an irrelevant and unworthy monarch, without which his life means nothing. His sadness is compounded by the fact that he is the biological father of the king’s children, and he can never love them, or be loved in return, as their father.
When the queen (Sharmila Tagore) is stricken with illness, she cries out for Eklavya from her sickbed, and the king, Rana (Boman Irani), strangles her in a jealous rage in front of their mentally disturbed daughter Nandini (Raima Sen). Nandini’s twin brother Harsh (Saif Ali Khan) reluctantly returns from London—time warps in a way—landing in a helicopter on the grounds of his magnificent ancestral home in rural Rajasthan, where he quickly finds out Rana killed his mother and Eklavya is his real father, making him even more conflicted about his princely identity than he already was.
While the morose Harsh mopes around the castle and his infatuated childhood friend Rajjo (Vidya Balan) dotes on him, the hysterical Rana plots to kill Eklavya with the help of his sinister brother Jyoti (Jackie Shroff) and Jyoti’s son Udai (Jimmy Shergill). But really Jyoti and Udai want to kill Rana and pin it on Eklavya.
Rajjo’s father—Rana’s chauffeur—gets shot during the assassination, and Harsh impulsively asks him for his daughter’s hand before he dies. Rajjo tries to let Harsh out of his promise because she doesn’t want him to marry her out of obligation or pity, but he reassures her he loves her, pretty unconvincingly.
Police officer Panna (Sanjay Dutt) investigates the murders, but since he hero-worships Eklavya and hates the royal family, Eklavya isn’t ever in danger of going down for the crime.
The real conflict comes when Eklavya is faced with avenging the king’s death, as he is duty-bound to do, and he must decide if the honor that defines him is worth the selfless sacrifices that come with it.
Eklavya is rated Worth Watching.
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