Sarzameen Review | Kayoze Irani’s Patriotic Family Drama Is a Sloppily Written, Melodramatic Drag

Anyone who has seen the 2021 Netflix anthology film Ajeeb Daasatans will never forget the segment featuring Shefali Shah and Manav Kaul. The director of that movie was Kayoze Irani, the son of actor Boman Irani, and that was his directorial debut. So when it was revealed that he was making his proper feature film debut with a movie starring Prithviraj Sukumaran as an army officer along with Kajol and Ibrahim Ali Khan, I was genuinely excited. However, the movie that was shot in 2023 was in limbo for a long time, and it was eventually released in a direct-to-OTT format. Well, when you finish Sarzameen, you would realize why the production house was hesitant to give this movie a theatrical release, as the drama in the Story was heavily outdated in terms of presentation, and what will bother you is the fact that nobody in a production house like Dharma could identify the flaw on paper.

Vijay Menon is an army officer who has a wife and son. Vijay is someone who prioritizes country over anything, and at one point, he had to make a tough choice between country and family, and his decision to choose country came at a heavy price. What that situation was, and the repercussions it had on Vijay Menon’s life, is what we see in Sarzameen.

Prithviraj is 42 years old, and Kajol is 50 years old. But these two share a screen age that makes them look like a conventional couple on screen. I mean, at a time when Ajay Devgn (56) is romancing Mrunal Thakur (32) on screen, this shouldn’t be a big deal. However, the oddest thing that was difficult for me to accept was seeing 24-year-old Ibrahim Ali Khan as Prithviraj Sukumaran’s son. And it is not like we are seeing an older version of Prithviraj in this movie. He looks pretty much his age or perhaps a little less than 42. And we don’t have any John Kattadi kind of backstory to Vijay Menon and Meher’s love Story. I am dedicating a whole paragraph to this age debate because casting the right people is a big deal, and every time Ibrahim Ali Khan and Prithiviraj Sukumaran share the screen, it is tough to believe that what I am seeing is a father-son duo.

Age is not the only thing that is going against this film. The fundamental problem is the dated writing that has identified the conflict, but has no fresh perspective in exploring it. The idea here is to put Vijay Menon in the same situation of having to choose between family and country on multiple occasions. But the way this movie approaches those occasions has no novelty to its credit, and the way you see characters getting brainwashed or sticking to their principles is presented in the most outdated way possible. The bomb diffusing climax itself was an idea that feels pretty familiar. But Kayoze Irani makes it even more cringeworthy by revealing the identity of a character. He may have imagined it as a shocking surprise when he wrote that scene. But before the reveal itself, one can sort of understand who that character could be.

Prithviraj as Vijay Menon has that body language and sharpness one would expect in an army officer. When it comes to portraying the emotional areas in the movie, the writing, especially the dialogues, is not helping him as an actor, and hence, those portions are a bit underwhelming. In certain areas, his dialogue rendering felt like what if Zayed Masood was a father. Kajol, on the other hand, has a bit more grip over dialogues. But still, some of the lines are so old school that even she can’t render them in a convincing manner. Ibrahim Ali Khan only has the physique to grab your attention. When it comes to showing the pain and rage of the character, his performance and dialogue delivery are really poor.

The drama in the idea is something that can make any filmmaker explore the possibility of a thrilling Story. However, in Sarzameen, there is no effort on a writing level to give it some layers. At the beginning of the movie, we see Vijay Menon being visibly upset when his son tries to congratulate him for getting a promotion. And there is a bit in the latter part of the movie where a dining table conversation almost becomes an interrogation. There are many such instances in the screenplay where this lack of subtlety makes these principal characters very unreal. The dialogues given to every character alienate them even more. Because of all these factors, when the movie reaches that melodramatic high towards the end, it was almost unintentional comedy. The frequent cut-to-black edits are not really helping the movie to have a rhythm.

Sarzameen is a movie that thinks it has surprises, but in reality, it feels like a derivative patriotic drama. It has family sentiments, terrorism, patriotism, and even a bomb diffusing scene, which almost reminded me of that spoof scene where the hero leaves the hospital after taking pushups, and goes to save the heroine by taking an autorickshaw, all while a bullet is approaching the heroine. Somewhere, it feels like this was a project that got greenlit when there was that surge of military-based patriotic films. But the writing here is so shallow that even if the movie was released right after Uri, the audience might reject it.