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Star Cast: Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insan, Fllora Saini, Daniel Kaleb, Jayshree Soni, Olexandra Semen, Gaurav Gera, Jay Singh Rajpoot
Director: Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insan
What’s Good: The unintentional humour that reeks through every scene is the only thing that’ll keep you pinned to your seats, if anything. These hilarious moments which will occur time and again during the more-than-3-hour-long tirade will make your jaws drop in astonishment. The movie needed a big help from its visual effects team, and they have done their best to bring it to a watchable level.
What’s Bad: It wasn’t enough that the makers went ahead and decided to shoot the film with a script that can be described in a few lines. No, they had to garnish it with extremely lousy action sequences, some really bad acting and an awful lot of propaganda meant for nothing but the glorification of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who happens to be the lead actor, the director, the writer, the producer, the lyricist, the music director, the cinematographer and even the editor of the movie. That’s not all; as if he wasn’t satisfied with that, he went ahead and took the costume department under his command as well, and came up with some disturbingly tacky costumes for himself.
Loo break: With scenes as long as 15 minutes, you’ll find the same one running even when you return after spending ample time in the loo. You won’t miss much even if you leave the film after watching just 10 minutes of it, since the remaining part is nothing but a repetition of the same.
Watch or Not?: No, you shouldn’t watch this film. Go spend your money on whatever else you feel like spending it on, but don’t let it go to waste by buying tickets to MSG: The Messenger. Its torturous length, the languid pace of its scenes, the eyesore of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s clothes and the overall repetitiveness of everything will keep you questioning why you’re occupying your seats still. That’s when you’ll feel the hurt of having given away your hard earned cash for something that doesn’t deserve it a bit.
User Rating:
MSG: The Messenger or self-proclaimed saint Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh as he is popularly known dislikes all things wrong in this society and he comes up with solutions for all them. One such problem which he thinks is ruining India is that of drugs and alcohol. He hence magically convinces alcoholics and drug consumers to give up their nasha and become his bhakts. This angers the drug mafias and they decide to send an assassin to kill Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. This is revealed in the first ten or so minutes of the film. The rest includes attempts after attempts of this assassin to kill the saint, and the hilariously innovative ways in which he saves his own life.
There’s a point towards the end when a tad amount of suspense is generated when it’s learnt that one of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s own people is involved in the plot of killing him. But that’s about it. It’s a story that can only be described in a few lines, and the director has stretched it into hours and hours of self-glorifying nonsense. He is a rugby player at one moment and a footballer at another. He becomes a taekwondo master in one scene, and even finds time to become a hip-hop artist in another. And you won’t believe that he even invents an absurd sport that’s a mash-up of cricket and gilli-danda; all while maintaining that he’s just a saint sent here to spread god’s message.
There’s a point in the film when a journalist asks Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh why he doesn’t wear the kind of clothes that other sadhus and babas wear. His reply is that he considers himself to be a common man just like all of us and hence wears clothes that are not different from theirs. It’s at this point that I went into my biggest fit of laughter during the entire film. That’s because he says these words while wearing attire that’s both eye-blindingly shiny and ridiculously funny at the same time
MSG: The Messenger Review: Script Analysis
Writer Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh has focused on finding a story that elevates his stature among his followers, and has inserted into that story tons of long and sluggish scenes that are also meant to serve the same purpose. The social activities which he claims to be responsible for are given so much importance that a majority of the film puts the plot on the backburner.
MSG: The Messenger Review: Star Performances
Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh is the only star of MSG: The Messenger, but the fact that he has decided to take up acting without even the slightest bit of knowledge of what it is, is evident from start to end. He delivers his lines with a dullness which is too sluggish for the ears, and moves his body like someone else is pulling the strings tied to it.
Gaurav Gera is an actor of caliber but even he couldn’t pull off anything in a space that’s populated with so much nonsense.
Flora Saini from Dabangg 2 and TV actress Jayshree Soni fail to entertain as well, just like all other actors from the movie.
MSG: The Messenger Review: Direction, Editing and Screenplay
The grand visuals that appear from time to time give you a glimpse of just how massive the production value of this film happens to be. Some of these scenes involve thousands of people and there’s credit to be given to those responsible for managing them. The visual effects are also worth appreciating, as they complement the action in a pretty neat manner. Editing is one department however which I’m really angry at. The story which the director wanted to tell could have been fitted into a tiny half-hour package, but instead it has been rammed inside a 3-hour long ordeal that is more of a test of your patience than it is a movie.
MSG: The Messenger Review: The Last Word
MSG: The Messenger is very easy to describe – A long-running propaganda film that aims to advertise self-proclaimed saint, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, his comical clothing sense and the cavalcade of his ludicrously modified vehicles. It wants you to worship him and do the exact opposite of what Raju Hirani’s masterpiece PK wanted you to do. The amount of money that has been spent on this nonsensical work is a tight slap on the faces of indie filmmakers who are running from pillar to post for funding. This film doesn’t deserve your attention, and it doesn’t even fall the ‘so bad it’s good’ category. Pass it on and do something worthy with your day. It gets 0 stars out of 5 from me.
MSG: The Messenger Trailer
MSG: The Messenger releases on 13th February, 2015.
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