The art of depicting patriotic films in India is nothing but a monopoly business of jingoism and propaganda circus these days. You don't come across a single film that portrays a tale of bravery without instigating gargantuan melodrama, laced with some nerve-wracking dialogues and tunes to stir your conscience with nothing but wrath and fury for the dictators. Let alone be the belittling of political ideologies or sometimes even shaming them straightaway.

Sardar Udham unflinches a valiant biopic of an exemplified revolutionary, who attempted to bring down uncompromised anarchy to his fists in the name of assassination, delivering justice in the name of revolution. Like all other patriotic films, Sardar Udham ticks all the boxes of evoking the range of emotions this kind of films are supposed to, but nothing at the cost of worshipping the act of sacrifice or glorifying the violence and aftermath of war.

The film quite surprisingly, becomes much more than Vicky Kaushal as the protagonist, who has delivered quite surely, one of the best performances of this year amongst the haystack of Indian, most importantly, Bollywood films. This film comprises of appropriately three departments, primarily which have made this film a not-so-debatable contemporary masterpiece; the unnerving direction of Shoojit Sircar, the most important person for deviating the patriotism to a whole new realm of grounded obstinacy, a masterfully crafted screenplay of Shubhendu Bhattacharya and Ritesh Shah, whose innovative approach of constructing a nonlinear narration and staging implies so many different chords, not only at the cost of juxtaposing the events, but also setting an example of remarkable feat in dramatic development, and last but not the least, the utmost brilliance in the cinematography of Avik Mukhopadhyay, whose frames have become so much more alive than one could've ever imagined for. Even the most bleakest frames have been presented as a colour palette, speaking more words than the dialogues. And who can forget the standout production design, which took a toll of matching it's standards to international criterion and never arises a second thought about it's homemade ambience, even when the regional locales were portrayed.

With an excruciating climax forming the crux of the film, Shoojit Sircar elevates the vulnerability to whole another level, alongside showing the dilemma and traumas of the antagonists without making it preachy, Sardar Udham never fails to prove how it can be a prototype for not only the best form of depicting valour and sacrifice and battling for the justice of motherhood, but also how to balance all the emotions and consequences that followed, in unison.

Inquilab Zindabad!