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Those of us who have loved Ramu for Rangeela, Satya, and Company will recall our regret on how film after film the brand RGV’s coffin was getting nailed (Naach, James, Shiva-II, Nishabd, Darling, Aag). With Sarkar Raj he saves himself from certain destruction. But then with Ramu you can never be too sure; he might have this formula working for him: get to produce & direct half-a-dozen odd films, and even if one works, the financiers will commission another adha dozen films. Sarkar Raj is that one ‘hit’ after the ‘six’ misses.

Sarkar Raj is sequel to a Sarkar (2005); the latter was a daft remix of Coppola’s Godfather film series and imagined power politics in Shiv Sena’s Bal Thackeray’s household (nonetheless, Sarkar managed a general positive response from the critics and the audience). Presently, in the sequel, Shankar Nagare (Abhishek Bachchan) finds himself drawn to an NRI-funded power generation project …

Aamir is ‘different’ in the sense that it seems that after eons one sees the streets of Bombay in a film how one might find them in real life. Aamir has its namesake protagonist land in Mumbai from the UK and get trapped in a nightmare situation. As soon as he gets out of the airport, he is put on call with a demanding and menacing gangster who wants Aamir to execute a terrorist plot if he wants to rescue his family that the gangster has taken hostage. Through the film, our man Aamir is sent from pillar to post running errands, collecting information, note slips, money and the bomb. Will he be be able to take control of the situation and prevail (the somewhat puzzling tagline goes, Kaun kehata hai aadmi apni kismet khud likhta hai, or Who says man is master of his destiny)?

Aamir is played honorably by …