Rome Shanti Rome

Movie review: *** 1/2

A tale of rebirth, patriotism and unbound love…sums up this new movie. It has all the elements of a potboiler with a intellectual hero, a evil villain and a fumbling joker thrown in.

The movie begins with a desperate Manmohan in the last leg of his political career trying to push a vital deal for the nation’s energy security. He is stopped in tracks by a evil Chinese sponsored villain called Karat. The villain and his Chinese cronies scuttle the deal and have Manmohan removed from his post and the PM simply fades away into the pages of history as a man who couldn’t.

Next the movie fast forwards to the year 2043. BJP has formed a coalition government with the commies and are again on the verge of signing a new nuke deal. The 143 year-old Karat, who is now older than the oldest turtle, once again attempts to stall the deal. Manmohan is now reborn as Mac, the lead singer of a rock band. During one of his performances at a rock concert, he starts getting images from his previous life. He collapses and is rushed to a nearby hospital. In the next few days, he remembers everything.

In the next few days Mac starts withdrawing from his new life as he struggles to uncover a glimmer of sense in the ocean of emotions that now surround him. One day, Mac has a visitor, a MP by name Sachin Pilot, who tells Mac about the unfinished agenda of his previous life. Sachin reconciles his two lives and says that he has to close out on the nuke deal as the nation was facing an energy crisis and needed the nuke deal to power its economy. Mac then vows to not only bag the deal, but also finish off the evil Jurassic monstrosity Karat and his equally evil party.

How the hero succeeds in this mission forms the rest of the story.

This film has also stars Musharraf, who provides the much needed comic relief. Musharraf plays the role of a tin pot dictator of a non-descript island republic, who is suffering from schizophrenia. He is paranoid about his uniform and harms anyone who even comes near it as the uniform was stitched by his friend, a childhood friend of Mush. Also watch out for Nutwar singh, oddvani and Jaswant singh, who make guest appearances as petrol vendor, travel agent and drug dealer respectively.