- Date of Release: 29 November 2024
- Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
- Language: Hindi
- Watch On: Netflix
Sikandar Ka Muqaddar
Introduction
As ancient as the title of the new Hindi film Sikandar Ka Muqaddar sounds, the setting of the drama is quite contemporary – well almost! It frequents two timelines from 2009 and 2024, with a clear cut time period of 15 years, yet says nothing – well almost! And oddly, the viewers are caught in this mess of a timeloop between Oops and The End, two flashes that conveniently play out in the final 20 minutes of the drama. The structure is almost like a film within a film with a conflict in between, only for the uno-reverse card to be played while ending up with the same mess, just the other way around. This is one of the major problems with Sikandar Ka Muqaddar because it seems as if the entire film has been reverse engineered in order to shock the viewers about a twist that you ‘supposedly’ did NOT see coming. The same was the issue with the Kanika Dhillon written film Do Patti that tried to be smarter than it actually was in the first place. Unfortunately for both the films, the end result remains the same – trashy as ever while just being over-indulgent in talks….THE END…..Oops!
Story & Screenplay
The premise of Sikandar Ka Muqaddar had a similar setup to a sequence from Neeraj Pandey’s Special 26. It almost spelt of a danger waiting to unfold even as the camera pans onto an exhibition center that would soon be the center of a crime. The tension in the air is effectively created with a bag of urgency that unfolds through a few of its characters namely the cops on charge and a mysterious phone call that alerts them of the crime. Soon, a shootout ensures in a rather simplified manner only for the camera to shift to another twist in the tale – a daylight robbery with three folks accused of the crime – a diamond trader Mangesh Desai (Rajeev Mehta), a single working mom Kamini Singh (Tamannah Bhatia) and a computer technician Sikandar (Avinash Tiwary). The investigating officer Jaswinder Singh (Jimmy Sheirgill) is about to enter a thorny and a chaotic period of his life through this investigation, mostly because of his ‘mool-vriti’ (instinct) going wrong, particularly with respect to the character of Sikandar. Oddly, the drama that spans over 15 years is a red flag in itself because of its title!
One of the main flaws of the writing here is with its setting that doesn’t allow the viewers to settle into the drama after its terrific 20 odd minute opening sequence. When the writers had established the three suspects over a diamond burglary, the drama had to business to cut to a future (in reality the current) timeline in 2024. The drama did not demand a non-linear structure in the first place because it anyway had very little to say in terms of the investigation that was unfolding. So I cared for two hoots about Jaswinder being an alcoholic, undergoing a divorce and losing his job, all at the same time just because ‘Karma’ was a b*tch. Elsewhere, Sikandar being in a foreign land promptly takes a flight to Mumbai just to obtain an apology from Jaswinder face-to-face, will go down as one of the worst triggers for a character who is in a happy place in life. And I am saying this, despite the writers desperately trying to work a logic around it, with a grand reveal at the end. Kind of pointless already! THE END……Oops!
One of the most frustrating things to witness in the film here is the three-act structure that is prevalent in every damn scene. And every scene potentially ends in an anti-climax despite the building tension created through a jarring BGM. Picture this – Sikandar is in a foreign land, supposedly attracted to a co-worker only to get to know about her past. She was apparently working as a bar dancer whom Sikandar thought was a plant of Jaswinder, only later getting to know that she had no connections to the cop. And what happens next? They reconcile! Why would you introduce such a plot point when you didn’t have anything to say in the first place! Another instance of Sikandar, now married to Kamini takes her to the hospital only to find out that she is diagnosed with ‘lung cancer’ (because of the water in her lungs). But that plot-point is completely resolved, two scenes later after he miraculously goes abroad. You see the trend here?
One of the worst way of depicting tension in a Neeraj Pandey film is by keeping the camera moving through the ‘walking’ characters, all along. This does stir up a tension but it works against the film when you don’t have anything to say. As I had said, the title is a big red-flag which basically meant that the twists and turns in the drama feel pointless after a point, and even more frustrating when the picture starts to get clearer. The timeloop of Oops and The End comes back to haunt the writing, particularly because the second climax lasting for a good 20 minutes again didn’t have much to say while being convenient with its playout and suddenly ending out of nowhere (a convenient way of opening ending a film which may have been incomplete?). And, this is not to also say that the first climax was exciting – it was dull and bland, thereby summing up the screenplay that had no business to be a 143 minute thriller.
Dialogues, Music & Direction
Interestingly, the dialogues make the film unusually dense because all that the characters do is either walk or talk. In fact, the lines also unusually make the drama verbose, ironically because it hardly has anything to say in the first place. I am all for dramas with a lot of talking but when the reveal also takes place through this medium, as opposed to strategic actions from the characters, then you do know that the writing has failed. The music is decent but the song was a montage of the growing love between two characters that barely had any significance in the overall scheme of things. The BGM is jarring beyond a point because the sound design does create a sense of tension, only for the writing to be much-ado-about-nothing. Likewise, the cinematography comprises of several tracking shots of characters walking to raise the intensity of the drama, but it hardly served its purpose when the writing is off. The editing is decent but given the ambitions of the writing to jostle between two timelines frequently, the drama does become a little fragmented in the process. And lighting in a Neeraj Pandey film severely needs a better colour correction, such that it doesn’t feel like a TV serial.
The film is also a new low for director Neeraj Pandey in his second consecutive dud this year after Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha. Both films suffer from a similar template of the past and present, even though the mystery conjoining the two timelines isn’t strong enough. It makes me want to believe that Neeraj has got himself in a creative jail of sorts, in trying to replicate his once successful formula in his own filmography, but failing to realise that the viewers have also evolved in the process. The director doesn’t quite create tension by enhancing scenes on his own – there is an overt reliance on the tracking shots and BGM which is never a good sign. Also, the aspiration to be Abbas-Mustan is just ridiculous with the twists in store. The direction misses the mark here unfortunately.
Performances
The performances are decent here but I couldn’t help but notice the body language of a few characters that was another red-flag in the offering. Also, it pains when good actors are given the importance of tertiary characters here(for a lack of a better word, no offence to anyone in particular). Ridhima Pandit and Zoya Afroz are decent but their characters are either entirely insignificant, or underdeveloped. Khurshed Lawyer as Parker is terrific and maintains a good sense of dignity through his character. Rajeev Mehta as Mangesh is hardly there, particularly disappointing because he was initially labeled as one of the suspects. Likewise for Divya Dutta who is good as Kaushalya but a character that had no trait whatsoever. Tamannah Bhatia as Kamini is wonderful here but I wasn’t a fan of the arc given to her, that kind of made her pointless in the whole puzzle. Avinash Tiwary as Sikandar is good but something was amiss about his body language that automatically made him a red-flag as far as the big reveal is concerned. Likewise for Jimmy Sheirgill too, who impresses as Jaswinder Singh but never really is about to rise above the predictability of his character. It all seemed forced and manipulated, primarily because of the way both of these characters were written.
Conclusion
Sikandar Ka Muqaddar is a conveniently reverse-engineered thriller packaged as a nonsensical drama that is nothing short of a yawn-fest. In an age when thrillers actually are successful in catching you off-guard (Kishkindha Kaandam and Sookshmadarshini), this was plain, bland and predictable. And it was also………Ooops, THE END! Available on Netflix!
