Here is the review for the movie Haider. Watch out this space for more updates!
Rating:3.5/5 Review By:Rajeev Masand Site:RajeevMasand
There’s a sweeping, operatic quality to Haider, director Vishal Bhardwaj’s robust staging of Hamlet against the troubled landscape of Kashmir at the peak of militancy in the mid-nineties. The ongoing insurgency, which has pitted militants and separatists against security forces for decades, makes for a potent setting. But Bhardwaj – who successfully rooted Omkara in the badlands of Uttar Pradesh, and Maqbool in the Mumbai underworld – isn’t one to use backdrop merely as decorative wallpaper. He presents a warts-and-all insider’s view, often making scathing observations like the identity crisis faced by local Kashmiris, or the torture of separatists and terror suspects in army camps. This is easily the director’s most political film.
Rating:5/5 Review By:Subhash K. Jha Site:IANS
"Haider" is a beast that just won't be tamed by regular cinematic definitions. There is flamboyance and subtlety, both at once in the treatment. Elegance and earthiness rub shoulders in the execution of what is regarded as one of Shakespeare's most complex tragedies.
And to place Hamlet in militant Kashmir ...what a masterstroke! Haider is the kind of rarest of rare cinema that unfurls wave after wave of exquisite narrative fuel into the frames, providing a kind of compelling narration that is propelled as much by the passionate writing as the intuitive direction.
Rating:5/5 Review By:Raja Sen Site:Rediff
Haider changes all that, with filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj probing into the valley nimbly and incisively -- we may, at this point, picture the director as a particularly poetic insurgent, wearing Shakespeare for a cloak.
This is not a simple adaptation, this takes not a simplistic stance; Haider is a remarkable achievement and one of the most powerful political films we've ever made, a bonafide masterpiece that throbs with intensity and purpose.
Rating:3.5/5 Review By:Troy Ribeiro Site: IANS
With revenge as the underlying motive, "Haider" is a quintessential Vishal Bhardwaj film adapted from one of Shakespeare's most powerful and influential tragedies - "Hamlet". It's a tale of a son's quest for his missing father.
Visually too, "Haider" is one of Bhardwaj's aesthetically framed films. Pankaj Kumar's cinematography highlights Kashmir in all its glory, displaying the beauty of the seasons. The atmospheric lighting adds to its visual appeal. The snow-filled frames are a delight to watch. But the jerky camera movements in some of the tense scenes are an aberration and mar the viewing experience.
Overall, "Haider" is a well made film complimented with dramatic performances, strong script and fine music. Don't miss this one.
Rating:4.5/5 Review By:Mohar Basu Site:Koimoi
Haider is an unforgettable film that never fumbles, never stumbles, and is so sure of itself that it cannot go wrong. From Shahid to Tabu to Kay Kay to the powerful cameo of Irrfan, everything in the film works. It’s a Guztaq film that audaciously breaks every rule in the book, everything that you could have expected from it and ends up being that edgy watch which you’ll savor, while you watch it from the edge of seats. Haider is Chutzpah and inkeeping with the same vein, I will rate this film the highest I have ever gone with a movie.
Rating:2.5/5 Review By:Koel Purie Site:Indiatoday
Adapting and setting Hamlet in the Kashmir of 1995 is a genius idea by Vishal. Here people can "disappear" without much hoo-haa. Here lives are worthless. Here an overtly sensitive Hamlet as a child of war, who has had constant contact with violence and insurgency, can be unbalanced, indecisive and so removed from reality that he can see apparitions and ghosts. It could have been a genius idea. It wasn't.
Rating:4.5/5 Review By:Shubha Shetty-Saha Site:Mid-Day
While Vishal Bharadwaj brings alive the ecstasy, pain and passion of Hamlet on screen, he also reminds us of the harsh truth in our own backyard, the man-made mayhem in the God-made jannat that is Kashmir. All this done with his classic poetic touch intact. We all have been hearing and reading horror stories involving people - who call Kashmir their home and their seemingly unending struggle in the face of extreme adversity - but we often quickly turn the page and move on. This time, Bharadwaj holds the mirror so uncomfortably close to the issue that intimate details of the suffering and the evident hopelessness of your own countrymen sits as a burden on your conscience.
Rating:4/5 Review By:Srijana Mitra Das Site: TOI
Haider is one of cinema's bravest takes on identity, frightening, yet fun - Irrfan delights as rockstar-like Roohdar, Haider's father's ghostly voice who is, in another clever twist, a spectral agent from Pakistan. Like Pankaj Kumar's stunning cinematography and Rekha Bhardwaj's haunting voice, Haider's actors excel - Shahid does justice to Hamlet, a quiet, fine-boned boy, descending into a man whose eyes gleam with hate. Shraddha's luminous as Arshee, Ophelia torn between Haider and father, heartbreakingly unwinding a red muffler she's just knit.
But the meat of Haider goes to Tabu, overpowering as gorgeous Ghazala, desirous of desire, blown away by guilt. Kay Kay excels as snake in the snow, craftily asking Arshee - 'Princuss! Prince kahan hai?' - an oily cog in the machine pinning Kashmir down. Haider's performances are perfumed with such delicious amorality that a moral twist follows - one that might've surprised Shakespeare.
Rating:2/5 Review By:Hungama Network Site:Bollywood Hungama
HAIDER definitely is Shahid Kapoor's best performance till date. It is one of the complex roles that he has taken up till date and he definitely gets into the skin of the character. Shraddha Kapoor, who is seen here after her last hit EK VILLAIN, seems to have perfected her Ps and Qs of emotions and even the 'Kashmiri English'. She is loveable in her part as the innocent girl who is madly in love with Haider. Even though Narendra Jha, who plays Shahid's father, doesn't have many scenes in the film, his voice haunts you till the end, as he seeks revenge from his brother. Kay Kay Menon, as the evil mind uncle, also delivers what was expected of the role. The show stealer of the whole film is indeed the firebrand actress Tabu, who as Ghazala, towers over everyone. The rest of the actors (Kulbhushan Kharbanda after a long time on screen, Aashish Vidyarthi, Aamir Bashir and others) simply help in moving the film forward. Here, a special mention goes to the duo that plays 'Salman Khan do-alikes'.
Rating:3.5/5 Review By:Anupama Chopra Site:Hindustan Times
There is much in Haider that deserves a standing ovation. Let’s start with the courage of director Vishal Bhardwaj. Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s most difficult and ambiguous texts. It’s also his longest— it takes over four hours to deliver.
Hamlet in itself is a beast to be tamed. Vishal and his co-writer, the acclaimed Kashmiri journalist Basharat Peer, transplant the play to Kashmir. It plays out against a socio-political tragedy that has been wrought over six decades and that has a Rashomon-like quality to it — the heroes and villains switch places, depending on the narrator.
The result is a film that is problematic and far too long, but also thrillingly ambitious and powerful.
Rating:2/5 Review By:Shubhra Gupta Site:Indian Express
The drama is pumped up by swelling orchestral background music, calling attention to itself. This is the first time I’ve felt this in a Vishal Bharadwaj film, he who knits the poetry and music so integrally and beautifully into his films. Shahid has a couple of break-out moments, but never really makes us ache for the lonely, deeply distressed young man. Kay Kay, who has a role to die for, plays it with familiar flourishes. Shradhha is fresh-faced but unexciting. And Irrfan, in a bit part, gets himself an ‘entry’, and we sit up, and then he slides, too. Even the marvelous Tabu, who can raise a scene just by being there, isn’t as riveting as she can be ( the way she was in Bharadwaj’s own ‘Maqbool’) : the strongly Oedipal moments create a picture but do not cause a frisson.