Omerta, starring the talented Rajkumar Rao, well famed as a National award-winning actor, is the latest release by Hansel Mehta, well known for “Aligarh”. Released on 20 April 2018, this movie is a recounting of the story of the famous British terrorist Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who assassinated Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. This is the fourth collaboration between Rajkumar Rao and Hansal Mehta after ‘Shahid’, ‘Aligarh’ and ‘Citylights’. The movie might not be the best flick available but is worth the watch. Consider getting the Ticketnew offers like availing a discount of 20% on paying via Freecharge.
Omerta movie cast: Rajkumar Rao, Rajesh Tailang, Blake Allan, Keval Arora
Omerta movie director: Hansal Mehta
Omerta movie rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
The full story of Omerta movie:
Driven by hatred, sense of victimhood and prejudice, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh wants to avenge the wrongs done to his “Brothers and Sisters” in Palestine, Bosnia and Kashmir. The beginning scenes fly high, showing his preppy and privileged life in England, besides a concerned father. The atrocities done by Muslims, in Bologna radicalized him. He picks up three British Men, and an American woman for his game of chess. They all spread and make people hostages at gun points. This scene sure gets Goosebumps.
Though Omar is insidious and persuasive, he’s not a skilful kidnaper. He’s arrested and is shot on trying to escape. He’s tortured in the jail, but the incident brings out the mafia don in him rather than facing him. His icy, violent personality makes others respect him and fear him. He gets released in exchange for the hostages on the Air India flight. And the mafia is back in action. Omar starts working for Pakistan as its secret agent but later, he starts recruiting young men to fight for Islam. He appears sporting gold-rimmed glasses and bearded as he comes out of a training camp, where the young men jump off the mountain to test their fate, either death or life, while the survivors applaud. He is shown uncontrollably violent and full of anger now.
Next, he’s a leader in Karachi and married to a trophy wife. The British link him to a 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta, through a money transfer. Then comes the incident of kidnapping of the Wallstreet journal reporter, Pearl. Though noble but naïve, the Journal reporter gets in a trap that has high heaven as its next step. The climax of the movie is his murder, in which Omar appears to be a blood-thirsty man. The tension is heightened by the portentous scene, leaving the audience with Goosebumps.
Omar appears to belong to a huge International terrorist network. Though, promised high-security Omar was tried and sentenced to death as a punishment for Pearl’s murder, but it was later turned into life imprisonment. Even from jail, he managed to wreak havoc by making two smuggled phone calls that almost initiated a war between Pakistan and India.
Star Performance:
Rajkumar Rao, famed for his various well played roles in movies like Newton and Citylights with the director Hansel Mehta, nails the role of the dreaded terrorist Omar Sheikh. Even with the limited material to his avail, he still somehow manages to work some magic proving his talents. And although he tries the best he can, the stress of being the only major character, with an unstable English accent, can’t carry the movie to success. Most of the foreigners hired to play as the people abducted by him seemed clueless at times. Timothy Ryan Hickernell saves himself some grace as his Daniel Pearl stands toe to toe with Rao’s Omar in some scenes when it comes to intensity. Blake Allan also does well, but the lack of any other major character or good performance is the major reason for the shortcomings of the film.
Direction and Music Review of Omerta:
The Movie is the directed by Hansel Mehta, who is famous for making films with emotional depth and exploring various deep topics. Some of his best-known works are “Citylights” and “Aligarh”, which were critically acclaimed and were praised well for their rich storylines and some fantastic acting from the characters.
Written by the director himself along with Mukul Dev, the writing isn’t the best of works from Hansal Mehta and falls short of expectations since it ends up focusing on Omar’s Modus Operandi rather than his ideology which could have been a masterstroke with the viewers.
The movie has a background score that was supposed to be chilling to go with the tone of the film but most of the time seems like a mismatch of two different tones and is certainly something that would have worked well had the film gone in the expected direction.
Expert Critics Reviews:
While a movie may be a box office hit even if it lacks a great script or a good opening with a highly attractive cast, but it really does need a good review to expect people the day after the release. Here are some of the reviews that would justify the ratings of Omerta.
Indian Express found the movie to be lacking passion from most of the those who worked for the movie. They found it to end up as boring as it seemed like an incident after incident storytelling as it did not explore his journey into radicalisation and how the actions in Bosnia actually affect him on a deeper level. They believe the film lacked the right direction and despite putting all the stress on carrying the film on Omar, didn’t develop his character well.
Times of India found the movie lacking in a lot of departments with dialogues, screenplay and music particularly weak. While they considered the direction and the visual presentation averageg, they found Rao’s portrayal of Omar Sheikh as the saving grace of the movie.
Hindustan Times gave it a kind 3.5/5 but totally thrashed the film lack of direction mentioning that it should have focused a lot more on his ideology as people didn’t go to watch his methods of operation.
Box Office Collection of Omerta:
The first trailer of the movie was launched on 14 March 2018 while the second one followed on 23 April 2018. The movie was released on 4th of May this year and failed to generate much hype from the trailers with lack of advertisement too. While already on the backfoot with not so attractive topic on which it is based, and with the limitation of A rating, the movie ultimately failed to deliver even for the few those who decided to try it out anyway.
The movie screened in 500 cinemas and failed to do well at the box office. It could only earn 0.54 crores on the first day and a low 3.25 crore in the first week. But the bad earnings can also be blamed due to instant hit, Avengers Infinity War, released only a week ago.
Conclusion: Despite the many shortcomings, the movie cannot be judged as a flop on the basis of the box office, with the movie getting positive reviews nonetheless. Every movie is nonetheless made with a lot of hard work and efforts from the crew as much as the cast and is still worth a watch considering it only rated average and not that bad. You might still enjoy the dark tones of the movie or maybe even find it better than the reviews. Do try your hands at sites like Ticketnew to avail some Ticketnew offers like getting 30% by paying with Phonepe to avail the tickets of the movie for cheap.