Adapted from the 2014 released South Korean film, 'Gukje Shijang' aka 'Ode to my Father' in the international market, 'Bharat', mounted as a comedy-romance-drama, follows the exceptional life of Bharat (Salman Khan), from his childhood to his old age.
Bharat experiences some of the most important events throughout his country's modern history. It is unabashedly his sentimental journey through some of the most important, tragic and difficult times in the annals of the country's history since Independence.
Bharat almost seems to be a metaphor for his entire generation, a generation that lived through the Partition of India, saw the circus, was shipped off to the Gulf when oil was discovered, witnessed pirates and the construction boom.
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The main driving force behind all of Bharat's actions are to protect the family he is left with and try to find those who were left behind in Pakistan during partition.
With a frivolous script that is good in snatches, the narrative has a cartoonish quality that is interesting intermittently and soulless otherwise. The amateurish writing is unwieldy with scant regard for research and history, character design. This coupled with a sycophant's approach to direction, the onus of "Bharat" disappointment squarely falls on Director Ali Abbas Zafar's shoulders.
The dialogues like "Yeh sher buddha toh ho gaya, par shikar karna nahin bhul gaya", which loosely translates to "this lion may have grown old, but he has not forgotten how to hunt" or "kya hua sexy" are bleak and delivered in the most lack lustre manner.
The mounting of the film with its brilliant production values may appear epic, but the story is like a balloon filled with hot air. The film floats as the narrative digresses to give us some laughable moments, but that takes away the joy from the sentimentality of the tale. The only moments that touch your heart are the heart-rending partition stories, at the far end of the second act.