Sher Shivraj (शेर शिवराज)

​"Sher Shivraj (शेर शिवराज)"

Watched Marathi movie "Sher Shivraj (शेर शिवराज)". 

Direction: Digpal Lanjekar. Written: Digpal Lanjekar. Produced by Chinmay Mandlekar, Digpal Lanjekar and others. Cinematography Reshmi Sarkar. Music by Devdutta Manisha Baji. It features Chinmay Mandlekar, Mukesh Rishi, Ajay Parkar, Varsha Usgaonkar, Mrunmayi Deshpande, Sameer Dharmadhikari, Mrinal Kulkarni, Astad Kale, Vaibhav Mangle, Akshay Waghmare and Digpal Lanjekar. The movie was released in Nov 2022 and runs for about 2 hour 40 minutes. I watched it on Amazon Prime on 11th May 2022.

This movie is about the story of Afzal Khan. His attack. Destruction of temples and idols. Agreement to meet for treaty. Afzal Khan’s treachery. Shivaji killing Afzal Khan. The story is well known to every Maharashtrian.

Movie starts with Shivaji Maharaj visiting Raje Sawant in Tal Kokan. Director smartly uses this scene to introduce most of the main characters intelligently. 

Chinmay Mandlekar plays Shivaji with ease. He is a skilled actor and he is accepted as Shivaji naturally. He plays an active role in this movie as compared to previous three movies. Murunal plays Jijabai and she too is more active as compared to previous three movies. Mukesh Rishi plays Afzal Khan and he does exceedingly well as usual. Astad Kale plays important role of Vishwas. Ravindra Mankani plays Shahaji raje, he looks tired, very tired. Mrunmayi plays a cameo in this long movie. Alka Kubal plays cameo of Bhavani. She looks सोज्वळ rather than रणचंडी. 

Digpal (the writer and director) plays Bahirji Naik. In previous movies Prasad Oak and Harish Dudhade played Bahirji Naik. Digpal (the actor) can’t be compared with Prasad and Harish. He falls awfully short. It’s inexplicable why the actors playing Bahirji keep changing. Since the all powerful director plays this role, Bahirji Naik gets to kill Adilshahi soldiers while singing a song. You should not exploit footage just because you are director. It’s abuse of power!

This movie uses animated animals, especially animated elephants are very easily recognizable. Special effects need some more work. Comparing with this movie, special effects of recent movie RRR were way superior. 

Now the story. The story on which this movie is based is relatively short. It’s about one encounter between Afzal and Shivaji. Grant some time to the director to build the background, establish the characters and set the tone. Considering all above you have to keep the story fast and movie crisp, it shouldn’t have been more than about two hours long. It’s at least half an hour too long. Length shortening would have made the story “happening”, movie crisp and watching enjoyable. 

Positives: Chinmay, Mukesh, Vaibhav

Negatives: Digpal, length

Watch if you have watched first three movies in this series of eight.