Sardar Udham

Sardar Udham

A young Sardar Udham Singh left deeply scarred by the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, escaped into the mountains of Afghanistan, reaching London in 1933-34. Carrying an unhealed wound for 21 years, the revolutionary assassinated Michael O’Dwyer on 13th March, 1940, the man at the helm of affairs in Punjab, April 1919 to avenge the lost lives of his beloved brethren.

  • Released: 2021-10-16
  • Runtime: 163 minutes
  • Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
  • Stars: Vicky Kaushal, Shaun Scott, Stephen Hogan, Banita Sandhu, Kirsty Averton, Amol Parashar, Tushar Jain, Tim Berrington, Andrew Havill, Richard Glover, Ritesh Shah, Jogi Malang, Sam Redford, Albrekht Tsander, Mark Lingwood, Simon Weir, Tim Hudson, Nicholas Gecks, Kuljeet Singh, Tushar Sheetal Singhal, Andrei Tolshin, Sarfaraz Alam Safu, Sergei Mazurenko
  • Director: Shoojit Sircar
 Comments
  • vinaygupta-03300 - 24 February 2024
    Excellent movie
    Writing the review after a long time watching the movie, so I don't remember much.

    Only that true acting of Vicky, the cinematography was par excellence. I felt the movie had lot of English dialogues. But it is obvious for a movie made with authenticity and not for crowd pleasing.

    Now, the story inspired me. How a single purpose can drive a human being, making him forget everything but his purpose. Whether the objective of his was justified or the best way to contribute to Indian freedom struggle is a matter of debate and there will be arguments from both sides. But what can't be questioned is his will and determination fuelled by his angst. Brilliance.
  • Quinoa1984 - 8 September 2023
    A compelling biopic and a superb lead performance at its center
    One of those non-linear Based on a True Story sagas where at times you may feel a little frustrated they went down the path of putting the story in this jumping-around structure. But then it starts working about an hour/70 minutes in and the performance from Vicky Kaushal as Udham Singh starts to deepen in how he's underplaying his role (in the first half) and making us lean in to see what is going on with this man's undying conviction that this man in his sights to assassinate is total scum (and we get some good scenes showing us what a Royal Imperial horror he is as well).

    The direction is not flashy, at least in the London scenes, and it works to the benefit of the drama overall; this is far from what you might see in a more typical Aamir Khan heightened/weepy Melodrama, rather it's closer to something like a prestige biopic from one of the art-house/independent labels from Hollywood (not a negative if not a major boost either).

    And where it leads to in the third act - if this even has acts - is devastating, in bringing to a head what Singh was going through all those years; this is a long sequence that takes up so much time and so much wasted life, but it is necessary to understanding what scars it left on this man's soul (the pushing of the cart alone, my goodness). It's a captivating film because it doesn't tell us how to feel about what this man was doing all that time and what we see him do early on in the story, rather it just shows it and trusts we can make up our minds - and his story is by extension the story of generations of British-Indian oppression and colonial brutality (I know that term is redundant but you get what I mean).

    If it gets into repetition (needlessly) it's in the many torture scenes, or in feeling to have to show the assassination a second time, and the CGI blood in the massacre in the last part takes one out of it; it still doesn't stop much of the film from being watchable well hewed drama.