Ashdoc's movie review---Roar !! Tigers of the Sunderbans

by ashdoc Sat Nov 01, 2014 6:16 pm

Where there is ambition there is effort to achieve that ambition , and if the effort yields results ashdoc is there to applaud---especially if the effort is a film....

So I launched myself into seeing director Kamal Sadanah's ambitious film---Roar !! Tigers of the Sunderbans....

So what are the Sunberbans ??
They are the forests straddling the Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent where the Ganges meets the mighty Brahmaputra river to form the largest delta on earth---a region crisscrossed by thousands of rivulets and canals and inhabited by scores of animals including the Royal Bengal tiger . Bengal also has the famous white tiger , and though the Sunderbans region does not contain any white tigers it is a white tiger who forms the core of the story....

A young photographer goes to photograph tigers and stumbles upon a white tiger cub from being poached by poachers , only to save it and bring it to his camp . But the tigress mother thinks that he has snatched the cub and attacks and kills him . The photographer's brother ( Pandit ) swears revenge on the tiger and forms a team of like minded individuals who descend on to the Sunberbans like a pack of wolves to kill the tiger....

Of course , the premise that it is right to kill a mute animal for fulfilling the lust for revenge is as corny as hell---whatever be the sin of the tiger....
But it is a premise that propels the story forward , and as the story turns interesting you forget the silliness of the premise....

So Pandit and his swarm move into the tiger territory of the Sundarbans despite the warnings of the female warden not to do so---and they move in on motorboats carrying the most sophisticated arms and gadgets like automatic rifles and infrared detectors and parachutes propelled by engines and whatnot....

And they also move in with the most sexy women possible....

AAAHH !! The women....
One is the tracker ( Jhumpa ) whom they have hired for showing the tiger tracks leading to the tiger...
The other ( CJ ) is an important component of the expedition....
So who is more sexier of the two ??
Of course , Jhumpa does try her level best to entice us by spraying her legs apart at the head of the boat and wearing skimpy navel exposing clothes and dancing sensuously at a tribal dance....and she is pretty good too...
But it is CJ who scores because she has more bouncier tiits and a more protruding butt....
And is it because Jhumpa cannot equal CJ in delicious charm that CJ is killed early in the film to let Jhumpa fulfill her role as heroine of the film---I found myself mourning for CJ's early exit from the film...when was I going to see those bouncy tiits again....??

Back to the story....
As Pandit and his team moves into core of the tiger sanctuary into territory from where no human has ever escaped before, they begin to find that their technowizardry is not a match against the forces of nature....
One by one the tigers begin to kill the members of the hunting party....
All the tricks they employ to trap tigers fail and it is the hunters who become the hunted....
The tigers are being helped by other animals in the forest , like crocodiles and poisonous snakes....
And even humans are against them too---for the leader of a gang of tiger poachers wants to get them bumped off , and Jhumpa who has been fooled into thinking that the group had come to photograph tigers realises the truth and is hellbent of stopping them from murdering tigers....
The odds seem stacked against the hunting party....And that seems to be divine justice ; punishment for embarking on such a spiteful mission of killing a white tigress mother who was only trying to protect her cubs....

So does the group succeed in it's mission to kill the white tigress ??
Or does it perish in the wilderness ??
Go and watch the movie for that....

The movie is embellished with some great photography and visual effects---photography of green dense forests and wide rivers and of golden sunsets and misty dawns ; visual effects of ferocious tigers pouncing upon their unsuspecting prey and crocodiles lunging undetected from ancient rivers and of snakes snaking around in the undergrowth and biting those who trample on them....
I dare say even Hollywood would not be ashamed of such cinematography and special effects....

The action scenes seem authentic and the firing of modern weapons by able bodied men seems real....
Also real is the almighty roar of the tiger in the film---enough to put the fear of God in you...
Acting by everyone lacks depth , but such a film does not require any great histrionics....
Music is only so so....
But the film does have an emotional core , and does build towards an uplifting climax...

So does the film mark a personal triumph for director Kamal Sadanah after all the misfortunes of life ( his father producer Brij Sadanah shot dead his mother and sister and then committed suicide 24 years ago after his sister's engagement party ) ?? A coming of age as director after not succeeding as an actor ??
That is question only the audience can answer by making the film a hit or flop at the box office....

Maybe Kamal can take leaf from the Bhagwad gita which says---you should only do your task ; should not bother about fruits of the actions....
And as far as the task is concerned , one can say that Kamal has put his best foot forward....

Verdict---The film rip roaringly delivered , at least for me....