Swatantrya Veer Savarkar attempts to show how the man played a major role in India’s freedom struggle and the extreme hardships he faced in the Cellular Jail. What could have been a brave and inspiring tale turns out to be a deeply problematic and even fictional one. It makes a mockery of certain heroes of the freedom struggle. Mahatma Gandhi is shown doing random, timepass stuff throughout the film. If an uninformed person sees the film, he or she’ll start to believe that Bapu’s contribution to India’s independence was zero. It’s interesting that writer-director Randeep Hooda showed their flaws but when you want to focus only on their minus points, then it’s not convincing. Moreover, depicting scenes like Bhagat Singh meeting Veer Savarkar, for which there’s no solid historical evidence, again shows that this film can’t be taken as a well-documented piece of work. Also, ‘Omitted history’ is mentioned in bold during the scene of the Bombay Naval Uprising of 1946. This attempt to show that certain incidents of history are kept hidden when the fact is that this chapter was very much taught in schools, is quite disturbing. Randeep Hooda the actor, however, breathes life into the role. Surely, his best work. Amit Sial(Ganesh Savarkar) leaves a huge mark. Rajesh Khera (Mahatma Gandhi) is heavily let down by the script. Ankita Lokhande is okay. The background score by Mathias Duplessy and Sandesh Shandilya also deserves special mention. But due to the content and most importantly intent, Swatantrya Veer Savarkar doesn’t deserve a watch.
My rating – * out of 5!