Movie Review: City Lights

City Lights, as I had already mentioned in my previous post, is an official remake of Metro Manila. Unlike other filmmakers, who claim that their film is “inspired” and not copied from the original, this movie on the other hand mentions the fact that it is based on Metro Manila, not one , two but three times.

City Lights follows the story of Deepak (Rajkumar Rao), his wife Rakhee (Patralekha) and their daughter. Deepak who lives in a small village in Rajasthan is happy with his family and owns a sari shop. One day Deepak unable to pay rent for his shop is kicked out of there. He decides to go to Mumbai for a better life. Rakhee at first reluctant to this decision agrees somehow and they reach Mumbai. Here they fall victim to the city’s underbelly about which they were completely ignorant of. The circumstances which follow in the story only give them a hope in the horizon for a better tomorrow but it gets worse soon.

Needless to mention that this is one of the best works of Rajkumar, actually all of his movies are one of his best works. About his acting skills, he looks like the successor of Irfan Khan. If we talk about versatile actors, they are not those punks who build six pack abs and dance with skimpy dressed girls, they are what Rajkumar is, and his acting in almost all of his works is so natural according to the character that for a moment you just remember him as that particular character and not the actor Rajkumar. I too did not have any idea that he is the Ragini MMS actor when I saw him in Gangs of Wasseypur 2 but I remembered his character Shadab Alam pretty well, that’s what Rajkumar is, in this movie also he plays the Rajasthani character with strength. The debutant, Patralekha in her deglammed avatar plays her character with full intensity though she has a limited scope. Manav Kaul who plays Deepak’s character is also a talent to look for in this movie.

In comparison to Metro Manila, the film was explained in a more simplified way. Almost all the scenes were same as Metro Manila, but the minor changes added in various scenes made it even better than Metro Manila, for example there’s a scene in which Deepak is giving an interview and he recites a joke to his boss, the interviewer, because he loves to listen to jokes. The boss gets happy and selects him for the job. The major changes were laid in the climax scene. But since it is the climax, I won’t reveal it. The songs of this movie, I am sure all of you must have heard, are brilliant and the best thing is that these songs run parallel with the storyline unlike those disgusting telugu remakes which have a dream sequence song after every ten minutes.

Overall City Lights deserves a watch, like Metro Manila, the story is the same and here I would like to add that this by far is the best remake ever made of a foreign film. Today every second film is copied from somewhere but the result is mostly crap (remember PLAYERS ?). Hansal Mehta as the director does a brilliant job by copying the BAFTA nominated independent film and succeeds at preserving it’s importance throughout the movie.

Out of a scale of 1 to 5, this film also deserves a 4, if you feel the need to rate my review click here, or if you have a different opinion about this movie, you can comment below.