ZORAWAR (Punjabi) - A father-son crime drama strongly generating a feel of the forgettable 80s with only one man making an impact & he is Pavan Malhotra. [TTP (To The Point) Review By Bobby Sing]

Beginning with the initial thirty minutes reminding you of the highly clichéd 80s family-cum-action drama, ZORAWAR loses its major marks right away due to some clear miscasts, so casual way of dialogue delivery by the lead and a very familiar kind of story progression with neither any pace or some inspiring, impactful performances to say it all.

Heavily relying on Honey Singh’s amazing stardom and the soundtrack (which itself is not a winner), ZORAWAR keeps going with a strong old world feel till intermission and then even shows the guts of throwing in a song post around 110 minutes into the film which is always hugely teasing and strictly avoidable.

Apart from the unexciting (predictable) story line and the lazy screenplay, the one major factor that remains the biggest drawback of the film is its language used which is deliberately toned down or heavily simplified in order to reach the audience outside Punjab and in other major cities. Probably the minds behind the project never realized that a Punjabi film largely depends and works because of its dialogues alone and therefore the language used in it strictly requires that local flavor and sound as spoken and heard in Punjab including its remote areas. But since the makers decided to use an over-simplified (Hindish kind of) Punjabi due to their own reasons, the film fails to impress both the Hindi and Punjabi film viewers together like a confused venture.

In other words, the dialogues of a Punjabi film unconditionally need to be written by a person brought up in Punjab (having studied there too) knowing the exact language as a friend, well versed with its widely used nuances, words, phrases and the local lingo as spoken in its various parts (including the universities). In fact that happens to be the basic rule of making any regional language film in India to be exact.

Anyway, in a film full of many amateurish supporting acts and a rather unconcerned kind of lead performance by Honey Singh (may be due to the unplanned delay and serious health issues), ZORAWAR has some good action, fine production values, Mukul Dev trying his best as one of the key characters and one man proving to be the only savior till the end, the ever depended Pavan Malhotra. So can you watch it if you must for only these two names alone and not for anything else. It’s not an awful film to be honest or a very bad film. But it’s too simple with nothing fresh and everything predictable that doesn’t allow you to call it even an average venture.

Rating : 2 / 5