PremiumAzaad Review: Aaman Devgan and Rasha Thadani’s formulaic launch works well in the beginning but goes against itself towards the end
Azaad Review: It indeed is a well amped launchpad for two young stars who literally survive under the shadow of a massive superstar but there are flaws.
Last Updated: 10.22 AM, Jan 17, 2025
Azaad Story: Govind (Aaman Devgan) is a ‘stable boy,’ as the daughter of his employer Janaki (Rasha Thadani) calls him. His crime is that he was born to the marginalized, and the zamindars are comfortable exploiting their existence. When he breaks free and runs to the forest, he meets a rebel, Vikram Singh (Ajay Devgn), whom the world calls a dacoit. But there is a fine line. Govind falls in love with his horse Azaad at first sight, but tragedy leaves them together to fight their fate and rise above the poverty they are forced to stay in by the British and the zamindars.
Azaad Review:
What worked for Lagaan as a movie in the 2000s was the sentiment that screams freedom and independence. The country had just completed 50 years of being independent, and that emotion resonated. The timing was correct. What was also correct was how well the script catered to a wide range of audiences—the romantics, the patriots, cricket fans, and those who would give their fortune to see the oppressors lose. In Abhishek Kapoor’s Azaad, all those sentiments return, but it has been 25 years since the last time this formula worked impeccably for a film. Two decades later, the world has changed, and so has the approach, and whether or not this formula will work is a question the writers’ room must have gone through many times.
Coming from the pens that wrote Kedarnath (Abhishek Kapoor), Bang Bang (Suresh Nair), and Sardar Udham (Ritesh Shah), you see shades of all those movies in Azaad, which aspires to be many films. The screenplay has a visual graph as it shapes a hopeless boy who now has to scale a journey to become a responsible man coming of age and turn out to be one of the people who would eventually kickstart the freedom movement. The idea is simple: marginalized people fighting for their rights while parallelly, a story unfolds where a man is trying to bond with a horse that is as mighty as the one who brought him up to be the most handsome of the horses, who, by the way, loves alcohol.
Azaad opens with a very impressive setup, where the world is built through the eyes of a boy who is yet to accept his reality. He accepts it when the zamindar beats him to a pulp for riding a horse that he is supposed to only groom as part of his job. This young man is still full of life and dreams big even after knowing the system will never let him and the likes of him rise any higher. But that doesn't stop him. However, unlike Lagaan, where the love interest is on equal ground, here the lover is the daughter of the zamindar. Azaad goes stereotypical here because we have seen this story unfold many times in much better ways.
However, what is also good in the first half of Azaad is that the story doesn't want to complicate things too much and keeps it simple. But in the zest to keep things simple, the film ends up being a bit too bland in most of its second half, and that is where it all goes wrong. You can see the interval block was moved to an abrupt scene from a tragic one that actually serves as an interval block because there is nothing in the second half for a good 30 minutes to balance the crescendo. The screenplay enters the stage of montages and the sudden change of hearts and bonding so quickly that it leaves room for little breathing. For many, it all probably ends when Govind finally finds Azaad, but the story continues and mostly feels dragged.
Until the last bit, where finally there is a race where both Azaad and Govind will prove their worth. While this race is interesting and again has the British putting a price on the defeat of the Indians, it is indeed a very interesting turn but comes after a series of banal sequences. Add to it the inaccuracies of sorts. For example, if the zamindar is so finicky about the marginalized, how does he allow his daughter to go play Holi with them and dance? How does an illiterate boy who doesn't even know the means of the word ‘stable’ suddenly say ‘unstable’ like he always knew what the word meant?
Why is the song placement so off in the entire movie? Ui Amma, which is the selling point of Azaad, is put so randomly that it was okay until it was just a music video for us. Also, please bring back the era of song teasers. This new trend of releasing the entire music videos is killing the excitement of witnessing their extravaganza on the big screen. Azaad is too sanitized for a film set in the 1920s when the world was very cruel. It wants to sprinkle political situations like Gandhi's non-cooperation movement but also be safe and not really explore more of the politics of the time. It wants to show the oppression by zamindars but only sticks to the obvious way of showing the situation.
Aaman Devgan is impressive as Govind, as you can see how confident he is even when acting alongside Ajay Devgn. Talking of Ajay, these roles suit him, and he looks perfect in them. Rasha Thadani is too young and does her best. There is a long way to go, and she is indeed a promising talent. However, she is actually giving a longish cameo in the film. Abhishek Kapoor’s direction tries too hard to be safe, and you can see it, but he can make a horse act, and that is a victory. The production design is average. Amit Trivedi’s album is decent but doesn't have a great shelf life.
Azaad Verdict:
Azaad begins on a great note and has confident actors anchoring it, but it loses the track midway, only to find it again by the end and become a film with Lagaan’s soul but not nature.
Azaad hits the big screen on January 17, 2025. Stay tuned to OTTplay for more information on this and everything else from the world of streaming and films.