The Tashkent Files Review : A Political Drama With Poor Execution

It is so easy to answer that what lies on 2^nd October? Of course, because it is Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary. Are you forgetting something important? No, it is not that Ajay Devgan went to Panaji with his family or something like that. For your information, 2^nd October is the birth anniversary of Lal Bahadur Shastri too. As his birth anniversary is systematically ignored, so is the history and mystery behind his death. But Bollywood keeps nothing secret and try to touch every aspect and hence the movie The Tashkent files came into the picture.

The Tashkent files released on 12^th April and got not so good response from the audience. It earned 4 Crores in 8 days. The film is based on the mystery behind the Indian former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s death. He died in Tashkent on the day after signing the Tashkent declaration due to a heart attack. (At least this is what ‘Authentic’ sources say) but his relatives and many other people denied that the heart attack was the reason for the death.

The story of this film is written and directed by Vivek Agnihotri.  The film features Shweta Prasad Basu,  Naseeruddin Shah and Mithun Chakraborty in lead roles. Shweta played the role of a young journalist who is working for a renowned news agency. She is accused of spreading fake news on Twitter. Her boss warns her to bring a trending topic in a week or else resign. On her birthday, she gets a call saying that the person on call will give her the scope and trending topic for her next news if she answers a few questions.  And that’s how the story of the film begins with ‘the mystery behind Shastri’s death’ as a scope. The acting of lead actors is nice, but the movie got poor reviews from critics and many are saying that the movie is politically inclined.

Speaking of story and plot, it is nicely told without engaging and blaming anyone directly, but some incidents seem baseless in the movie. The execution of the story is inconsistent. Surely, the film brought the past in front of everyone but it could have been done in a more theatrical way.

We would give 3 out of 5 stars to this movie.