There's a lot of baggage that viewers of "Sarkar 3" might like to know, but realistically do not need. For example: when we last saw Subhash, it was right after the death of loyal son Shankar (Abhishek Bachchan, Amitabh's real-life son). This loss is represented in "Sarkar 3" with unmoving recurring shots of Amitabh watering a plant by a portrait of Abhishek. Subhash is still the head of his "shadow government"-style organization, a group of mafia-like leaders who claim they are the face of their community's dissatisfaction with a corrupt politicians, police men, and business tycoons. He takes on corrupt politician Govind Deshpande (Manoj Bajpayee) and his shadowy criminal patron Michael Vallya (Jackie Shroff) with the help of hot-head grand-son Shivaji (Amit Sadh), the son of Subhash's prodigal (and also dead) son Vishnu (Kay Kay Menon).
This new story is disappointing on multiple levels. For starters: "Sarkar 3" begins as a story about two ideologically opposed characters, Govind and Subhash. Govind, during convincing political rally speeches, raises some valid points about Subhash's style of vigilante governance: why trust someone who rules through intimidation, and is not officially accountable to anyone? But Varma and Subhash wave away these concerns by making a puppet controlled by Vallya, a cartoonishly self-involved villain who wears sunglasses (at night, even) and is constantly futzing with his iPhone. This wouldn't be such a bad thing if many of the analogies and metaphors that Govind and Michael use when they're privately talking about crushing Subhash weren't so dumb. Govind makes a migraine-inducing analogy where he compares Subhash's adviser Gokul (Ronit Roy) to a powerful wave whose influence must be controlled in order to take away a small, but worrisome amount of metaphorical sand from under Subhash's feet.
And then there's all the condescending, sexist lectures that Michael gives to his airhead girlfriend—he even praises her for being heartless—shortly before he kills her because "she's starting to ask too many questions." Which also wouldn't be so bad if Shroff didn't deliver an underwhelming performance. Bachchan, a natural charmer, doesn't fare much better. He's constantly filmed in suffocating extreme close-up. In fact, Bachchan spends much of the film glowering imperiously at antagonists in dimly lit rooms while an uninspired Ravi Shankar (not that one, another composer with the same name) score forcefully underlines every tacit insult, and caustic declaration that Bachchan delivers. This man may be powerful, but you can't tell just by looking at "Sarkar 3."
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