I was so not interested in watching Department, but here I was for I wanted to see how bad it could be. Plus, I had this review to write. Two and half hours of comedy and torture, together! RGV has gone nuts!!
Honestly, Department shouldn’t have been such a bad film. The script, written by Nilesh Girkar, is pretty decent, and if handled properly, it could have made a pretty good movie. But Ram Gopal Varma just does the opposite and brings to screen a lazy dull boring film. He doesn’t manage to extract the best out of any of his cast. The screenplay is tediously slow, and at times starts to test your patience. RGV has this knack of picturizing a scene in slow motion while making it effective, but in this movie, all such scenes seemed totally out-of-place. The slow motion climax fight and the overused stunt camera work are just a couple of examples of where the film went wrong. On the whole, RGV disappoints!!
On the acting front, no one shines. Rana can’t act for nuts. One wonders how he made it into Bollywood when he can’t even survive in Tollywood. To be fair to him, he tries to act, but he needs to realize that its something physically impossible for him to do. His voice is the only saving grace. Sanjay Dutt looks like a stone and has a straight face throughout the film. It was as if he was reading lines of the script with no expressions. Amitabh Bachchan over does his part and was totally wasted. I don’t think an actor of his caliber should even do such kinda roles. Anjana Sukhani is pretty good, while Lakshmi Manchu is alright. Vijay Raaz was too loud, Abimanyu Singh looked dumb. The best act probably was by Madhu Shalini, for she atleast tried her best to create the oomph factor.
On technical front, it’s a disaster. Music by Bappi Lahiri, Dharam-Sandeep and Vikram Magi is mediocre. It was the most pathetic and horrendous background score I’ve heard for any movie in my life so far. I don’t have words to describe how bad it was. Cinematography by FXS team (Ravichandran Thevar, Siddhartha More, Zaryan Patel, Sapan Narula and Harshraj Shroff), shot using small cameras was good initially, but every shot of the movie being shot at odd angles made it lose the effect. Editing by Vinay Abhijit was again mediocre.
Overall, a disappointing film. Ram Gopal Varma has definitely got the talent, no doubt about that. But he seems to ditch it and tries to make some dumb-ass films at times. Department just happens to be one of those films. Can the real RGV please stand up??
Acting: 5/10
Story-Screenplay-Direction: 4/10
Technical Aspects: 5/10
Is it worth your time and money??: I so wanna say yes for I want you to go through what I went through. But I’ll be nice and request you to stay away from Department. RGV has gone bonkers, and so will you if you do go watch it. Stay away!!
Verdict: 4.5/10
