★★½
“BollyNotVeryGood”
This is a modern update of the story of Savitri and Satyavan, originally found in Indian epic saga the Mahabharata [and when I say, “epic saga”, it’s 1.8 million words long!]. The tale has been an immensely popular topic for Bollywood, Wikipedia saying there have been thirty-four different film versions, dating back over a century to 1914’s Satyavan Savitri. The basic story is of a woman, Savitri, who defies a prediction that her chosen husband, Satyavan, will die in a year, and marries him anyway. She then has to talk the god of death out of collecting him.
The director’s day job is as a California dentist, which may explain why a good chunk of this is set in Vegas, and this was his first foray into Bollywood. It was a bit of a jarring introduction, since Gill apparently received death threats as a result of this film and was burned in effigy. Hey, everyone’s a critic… But it was actually religious fundamentalists who were responsible, sending him an email which said, “Self ban your film Warrior Savitri. It shows Goddess Savitri in poor light. If this film is released, you will be beheaded in public.” He still appears to have his head: perhaps the fundamentalists saw the film and realized it wasn’t worth a fuss. While I can see what it’s trying to do, the bulk of it doesn’t work.
That’s largely down to poor execution, though the plot has enough of its own problems. For example, the scene setting has Savitri (Raizada) learning martial arts after nearly being abducted as a child. However, this is then all but forgotten in the particularly tedious middle portion, as she meets Satya (Barmecha) and elopes with him to Vegas after a poor astrological prognosis of imminent doom causes her father to nix the marriage. After some more messing around – and, of course, the inevitable (and not very good) musical numbers – the predicted doom occurs, with Satya critically injured in a poorly-staged car-crash. Savitri gets involved with the evil Money John (Smoorenburg) and his sidekick, Candy (British page 3 girl, Lucy Pinder), to whom Satya owes money, while also having to bargain with Yama (Puri) for her husband’s soul.
Raizada isn’t actually the issue here; indeed, most of the performances are fairly serviceable and occasionally good. Puri is particularly impressive, his portrayal of the Grim Reaper as a world-weary, avuncular type being both against the obvious approach, and almost endearing. The scenes with the god of death chatting to Savitri are the best in the movie. The problems are more technical: most notable are some really bad digital effects, from green screen work to CGI explosions, and horrendously awful foley work during the martial arts fights. Really, when you’ve got a lengthy cat-fight between two women like Savitri and Candy, and all that sticks in your mind is how bad the sound effects were… something has clearly gone horribly wrong somewhere.
Dir: Param Gill
Star: Niharica Raizada, Rajat Barmecha, Om Puri, Ron Smoorenburg
a.k.a. Waarrior Savitri [yes, with two a’s!]