Bharat: frenetic Salman Khan epic throws everything in the mixer

Bharat (transl. India) is a 2019 Indian Hindi-language action drama film written and directed by Ali Abbas Zafar. The film stars Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif, Tabu, Sunil Grover, Disha Patani and Jackie Shroff. It traces India’s post-independence history from the perspective of a common man, and follows his life from the age of 18 to 70. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 31% based on sixteen reviews with an average rating of 5.25/10.

Renuka Vyavahare of The Times of India gave the film three and a half stars out of five, calling it “an exhausting, scattered watch despite the entertainment, humour and nobility it propagates”. She concluded, “Bharat is well-intentioned, entertaining and doesn’t succumb to the trappings of commercial potboilers”. Priyanka Sinha Jha of CNN-News18, praising Khan for his performance rates the film with three stars out of five, and feels that the script is bit lengthy and required ‘sharper’ editing. In the end, She says, “For all its virtues, Bharat falls short of becoming a tour de force, but it could turn into a crowd-puller.”

Trade analyst and critic Taran Adarsh concurs with Jha on script trimming and gives four stars out of five. Declaring it “smash-hit” he praises Ali for direction, Kaif, and Khan for performance. He feels that the film is an emotional journey that wins the viewers over. Manjusha Radhakrishnan of the Gulf News, also says that it would have benefited from trimming so finds the film ‘dull’, that is likely to test patience of audience. And, she gives it two stars out of five.

Ananya Bhattacharya writing for India Today praised acting of Kaif and Khan but feels that the main attraction is Sunil Grover. She also rates it with three stars out of five and concludes that Salman has given his fans ‘an outand-out entertainer’. Rajeev Masand writing for CNNNews18, finds the film “unmistakably boring” and “excruciatingly long”. He rates the film with two stars out of five. Anna M. M. Vetticad of Firstpost finds the film laden with weak ‘humor’ and ‘lackluster’ songs.

Rating it with two stars out of five Vetticad concludes, “Far from being a Forrest Gump with Salman Khan, Bharat is mostly a plodding trek through post-1947 to contemporary India.” Jyoti Sharma Bawa of the Hindustan Times finds it ‘an emotional Eid winner’ and rates it with three stars out of five. Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express gave two and a half stars out of five and opines, “The good thing about the film, despite its eye-roll moments, is its attempt to create an ‘ordinary’ man without any particular skills.”