Sanju
Synopsis:
Sunil Dutt is just absolutely losing his mind while screaming through a prison telephone because his son is about to spend years behind bars for holding an AK-56 rifle and everyone in the country thinks the family is a bunch of traitors. God. Ok wait, let us back up a little bit because if you are jumping straight into the biopic Sanju directed by Rajkumar Hirani, you need to understand that this is not your typical squeaky clean Bollywood drama where the hero saves the day without a single hair moving out of place. Ranbir Kapoor plays Sanjay Dutt in this massive biographical film about the most chaotic superstar life in the history of Hindi films. Ranbir literally morphs into the guy with the wig, the heavy breathing, and the frantic eyes, and honestly, the transformation is wild even if the movie tries really hard to make you feel bad for a guy who made some truly monumental, face-palm-worthy mistakes. We start way back when a young Sanju is basically being bullied by fame because his parents are Sunil Dutt, played by Paresh Rawal, and Nargis Dutt, played by Manisha Koirala, and they are absolute royalty in the golden age of old school Hindi cinema. The kid is insecure, he is terrified of not living up to his dad's legacy, and he hates his own reflection so much that he lets a sketchy friend drag him into trying hard drugs for the very first time just to feel cool. And then boom, he is completely hooked on heroin in a matter of seconds, which is just rushed through so fast in the script that you barely have time to blink before he is hiding drugs in his mouth during a family dinner and passing out on the bathroom floor. It is a absolute mess. Sunil Dutt tries everything to save his son from destroying himself, shipping him off to a brutal rehab center in America where Sanju has to eat out of garbage cans and beg strangers for food just to survive the withdrawal symptoms. And honestly, can we talk about the background extra in the American rehab scene who is wearing this genuinely heinous, neon yellow knitted sweater with giant purple triangles that makes zero sense for the nineties and distracts your eyeballs completely away from Sanjay's emotional breakdown? Seriously, that sweater deserved its own award. Anyway, Sanju eventually gets clean, comes back to India, and starts making movies again, but right when things are finally looking up and he is winning awards for his acting, his mother tragically passes away from cancer right before his big debut film Rocky hits the theaters. That grief completely shatters him all over again, driving him right back to substance abuse with a vengeance. Stuff happens so fast you get whiplash. He is doing drugs, he is paranoid, he is hanging out with the absolute worst crowd imaginable, and he buys an illegal firearm from some shady underworld contacts because he thinks someone is going to bomb his house during the deadly 1993 Bombay riots. Look, it is a monumentally dumb decision that ruins his entire life. The police arrest him under TADA for terrorist links and possession of illegal weapons, and suddenly the actor is thrown into a literal nightmare of prison cells, brutal interrogations, and constant media witch hunts. This is right around the interval point where you can go grab some popcorn and complain about how a random song and dance number about his wild dating life was awkwardly jammed right into the middle of a depressing police interrogation scene. After the break, the movie introduces a biographer played by Anushka Sharma who has to listen to Sanju ramble through his life story to help him write a book that will clear his name and prove he was never a terrorist, just a profoundly stupid and naive guy who trusted the wrong people. We get flashbacks of his wild love life where he dates multiple women at once, forgets their names, and even accidentally gives one of his girlfriends his current girlfriend's engagement ring. It is hilarious and pathetic at the exact same time. But the core of the story is always the rocky, tear-jerking relationship between Sanju and his father Sunil, who stands by him through every single courtroom battle, media slander, and public humiliation until Sunil sadly passes away of a heart attack without ever seeing his son completely exonerated of the terrorism charges. Sanju is left utterly shattered, walking around his empty house and staring at old photographs while realizing he has to face the final verdict all by himself. Years roll by in a blur of appeals and legal nightmares until the supreme court finally drops the terrorism charges, though they still uphold his conviction for illegal possession of a weapon. The final scene shows a much older, wiser, and visibly exhausted Sanjay Dutt walking out of Yerwada Central Prison carrying a cheap plastic bag, kissing the dirt outside the gates, and hugging his weeping wife and kids as the real Sanjay Dutt walks out hand in hand with Ranbir Kapoor to wave goodbye to the camera.
Ranbir Kapoor wears a prosthetic nose in Sanju that looks slightly too heavy for the bridge of his face, shifting just a fraction of a millimeter too late whenever he turns toward the light, and if I'm honest that tiny prosthetic drag bothered me far more than any of the movie's much-debated ideological evasions. Rajkumar Hirani wants you to look past the makeup and see the tragic, misunderstood boy trapped inside a massive public persona, but the film is far too eager to hustle you along from one biographical crisis to the next without ever letting the dust settle on the carpet. Hindi films of a certain scale usually prefer their hagiographies served with a side of heavy-handed moralizing, yet this picture operates with the slick, fast-moving urgency of a courtroom defense attorney who knows his client is guilty of a few things he’d rather not talk about too loudly.
The script, co-written by Hirani and Abhijat Joshi, operates on a principle of selective compression that turns a genuinely chaotic life into a series of punchlines and melodramatic close-ups. Sanjay Dutt’s early drug addiction is introduced with a quick montage that feels less like a descent into hell and more like a bad weekend at a music festival, before pivoting abruptly to the heartbreaking scenes of his mother's illness. Manisha Koirala plays Nargis with a quiet, devastating dignity that anchors the first half of the film, reminding you what actual emotional weight looks like before the narrative steers back toward the frantic, self-pitying antics of the titular star. You can feel the screenwriters sweating over how to handle the 1993 Bombay blasts and the illegal possession of weapons, treating the legal fallout like an unfortunate misunderstanding cooked up by a predatory press and a few bad eggs in the police department.
Hirani directs with his usual hyper-kinetic sitcom grammar, filling the frame with bright primary colors and bouncy editing rhythms that sometimes completely drain the dramatic air right out of the room. When Sanju cries, the camera rushes in; when he makes a joke, the background extras double over with theatrical glee. It’s a style that works wonders for lighthearted campus comedies like 3 Idiots, but applied to a man facing decades behind bars for terrorism-related charges, the tonal whiplash is genuinely dizzying. There's a supporting character, a smooth-talking lawyer played with a strange, jittery intensity, who appears to have been dubbed entirely in a small room in Andheri with zero regard for the acoustics of the actual courtroom sets. It’s a small mechanical flaw, but once you hear the vocal track floating a few inches outside the actor's teeth, you can't unsee it.
Still, Kapoor throws himself into the physical mimicry with a level of terrifying commitment that occasionally saves the picture from its own protective impulses. He doesn't just imitate Dutt's signature slouch and raspy cadence; he captures the frantic, wounded eyes of a spoiled prince who genuinely believes the universe has singled him out for uniquely cruel punishment. Paresh Rawal matches him beat for beat as Sunil Dutt, playing the stern, loving father with a weathered authority that keeps the emotional stakes from floating away completely. When father and son share a quiet moment in a hospital room, the film drops its frantic gag-reel pacing and achieves a bruised, aching authenticity that makes you wish the rest of the project had possessed the courage to be this honest about the mess they made of things.
The soundtrack leans heavily on upbeat anthems that try to convince you of the protagonist's resilient spirit, though the main theme song repeats so often during the transition sequences that you start dreading the opening notes every time they creep back onto the soundtrack. Cinematographer Ravi Varman shoots the sprawling bungalows and desolate prison cells with a glossy, golden-hour sheen that turns even the lowest points of a wasted life into high-end commercial spots for redemption. You look at these impeccably lit frames and remember that mainstream Hindi cinema rarely knows what to do with real darkness unless it can be neatly wrapped in a catchy chorus and a tearful family reunion by the time the interval card drops.
The movie wants to convince us that Sanjay Dutt is primarily a victim of yellow journalism, bad company, and a mistaken association with AK-53 rifles, neatly sidestepping the actual mechanics of his culpability with a wink and a shrug. It is a very entertaining piece of cinematic sleight-of-hand, directed with enough bounce and charisma to keep audiences hooked even when the central argument starts collapsing under the weight of its own absurd deflections. Kapoor gives a performance that deserves to be studied in acting classes, even if it is trapped inside a feature-length PR campaign that mistakes self-pity for soul-searching.