Nowadays, it has become a trend of dubbing most of the films and making them available for Pan-India audiences. August 16, 1947 also follows the trend and the film being originally shot in Tamil is dubbed in Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and English. August 16, 1947 is that patriotic film which serves unwanted melodrama in the name of patriotism. Recently, we had witnessed crap films from the South Industry like Kabzaa and Dasara which were unbearable and now August 16, 1947 joins that list. Don’t know why makers have to make every film a Pan-India film. Not all films can be Baahubali, Pushpa, KGF or RRR and makers should understand this thing. SS Rajamouli can pick any simple story and can make it huge and grand with his powerful vision. August 16,1947 has an universal subject of independence and freedom but is not even suitable for a single state forget about the Pan-India thing. The story about struggle for freedom and independence is an universal subject and August 16, 1947 has missed a golden opportunity to appeal to a wider audience. The film should have been helmed by an experienced director or the one who has knowledge about this subject and this film would have been a powerful one. Debutante NS Ponkumar’s dull presentation and storytelling makes this one a crap. This story needed a powerful vision, conviction and presentation but it lacked all of it and NS Ponkumar has to be blamed here.
August 16, 1947 tells the story of a remote village in the South. The story is set over the period of 5 to 6 days. The village is ruled by a cruel and brutal British Officer named Robert (Richard Ashton) who tortures and punishes people by doing atrocities. He along with his fellow officers make people continuously work for 16 hours without letting them take any kind of rest and beats them if the work is stopped. His son Justin (Jason Shah) is a man full of lust. To quench the lust and his sexual desires he randomly selects any woman or any teenage girl from the village. To save the honor of their girl child from Justin, many villagers kill their own child. Param (Gautham Karthik) is a villager whose mother had committed suicide because she became a hunt of Robert’s sexual desire. Villagers often think that Param is against them and wants to take revenge from fellow villagers and that’s why they don’t care for Param much. Zamin (Mudhusudhan Rao) who is head of the village has a beautiful daughter Dipali (Revathy) whom he has kept hidden for the past 8 years due to fear of Justin. Param loves Dipali since childhood but is not able to express his love to her. Things get ugly when Justin comes to know about Dipali and wants to spend a night with her. India has already got independence on 15th August and villagers are unknown to this fact and the ones who know this have been brutally killed and injured by Robert. What will Param do to protect his love? How will the villagers stand united and face the evil rule of Robert? To find these things you will have to watch the film.
We all know the atrocities faced by Indians before Independence. Britishers had made people’s lives miserable. August 16, 1947 has shown the brutality and atrocities in a good manner. When the Britishers are hitting people or killing them you feel for those people and have a soft corner for them in your heart and will leave you with teary eyes. Those brutal Britishers didn’t have any mercy towards these poor people and killed them just for fun. Those officers didn’t distinguish between man, woman, child or an old person. August 16, 1947 manages to show all the brutality, cruelty, abuses, atrocities in a proper way and this is the only good thing about the film.
August 16, 1947 loses its track now and then. The screenplay is all scattered. Some scenes are really irritating and unwanted. Unwanted love stories and melodrama hurt the narrative. The film follows the old school film-making and fails miserably. We have been watching the same old clichés for years and all these things have become outdated. If a film would have been made in 1947 about independence it would have been like August 16, 1947.
Talking about performances, Gautham Karthik, the lead actor, is really annoying in most of the scenes. The way he acts, the way he delivers dialogue, everything he performs on-screen looks so low grade. There should have been some powerful scenes for him and writers are to blame here. A macho man should have been casted for this role so that it would have become a treat to watch hero and the villain of the same caliber. Casting Gautham as a lead actor was a terrible decision. Revathy who has made her debut with this film is strictly average. Richard Ashton as Robert is brutal, scary, powerful and deadly as any villain can be. Jason Shah as Justin doesn’t leave much impact. Mudhusudan Rao is a talented actor but the script doesn’t give him much chance to showcase his talent. Rest of the cast is average, they don’t do anything much rather than pleading, crying and shouting.
One thing I would like to request to south makers is that please stop dubbing songs. Dubbing of dialogues is bad but the dubbing of songs is terrible. The lyricist should be arrested for writing such a piece of shit. Songs don’t have any rhyme and disturb the whole narrative. Lyrics are so badly written that even a small kid can write better than this. There are 4 to 5 songs in this film, and are badly written and performed. The songs don’t fit in the narrative at all.
The set design and costumes are good. Loud background music becomes intolerable at times. Cinematography is poor. Writer NS Ponkumar is to be blamed here for writing such a horrible script by adding all the unwanted stuff. This topic definitely needed better writing and a better direction. The name of AR Murugadoss attached to this project makes me disappointed. Hindi dialogues are really terrible and are intolerable at many occasions. Editing of those 5 unwanted songs and some scenes would have reduced the runtime of this torture. The story is very much predictable and stretched unnecessarily.
In the film Britishers torture the people and in real life the film tortures the audience. In the film people fight for the freedom & independence and in real life audience will be asking for this torture to end so that they the can get freedom from this headache. August 16, 1947 should be skipped at any cost if you don’t want to become a slave of poor cinema.
Rating – 2/5*
Watch the trailer below:
