The audience from all quarters lapped up the film making it a super hit. It is truly beautiful account that spells out the completely patriarchal manipulation of a young girl by tricking her into becoming a spy with talks of “for the sake of the country” and robbing her of the life of a normal, growing girl who falls in love with her husband. This is perhaps Meghna Gulzar’s career-best as director. The film is an adaptation of Harinder Sikka's 2008 novel Calling Sehmat, a true account of an Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) agent who, upon her father's request, is married into a Pakistani family of military officials to relay information to India, prior to the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.

Looking at the box office takings of Sanju, one may assume that fictionalised biographies are the demand of the day. And not to forget, the charismatic intrigue set off by the story of Sanjay Dutt. The critics seemed to have liked the film mainly because of the performances, the script and the direction. Sanju surpassed the lifetime domestic net collections of Tiger Zinda Hai and PK to become the second highest-grossing film (nett) of all time. The protagonist is fleshed out very realistically by Ranbir Kapoor and the technical gizmos are just right to draw the mass audience to the theatres from every corner of the country.

It is a fictionalised white-washing of the imprisonment of a top star, Sanjay Dutt, where the media is labelled the villain. But as a film per se, it is nothing more but a public relations exercise disguised as a feature film made on a lavish budget. But this yardstick does not stand the test of a “good” film.įor example, Sanju, according to box office takes, is a super duper hit. Why? Because the box office is the yardstick and a “hit” is calculated in terms of how much the producer gets in return from ticket sales compared with how much was the budget of the film. Wrapping up a year-full of films to list the hits and flops is dicey business.

Sonu ki titu ki sweety index