Mr. Natwarlal
- Director
- Rakesh Kumar
- Studio
- Navjeevan Productions
- Release Date
- 1 January 1979
- Language
- Hindi
Review
There's a particular ache that comes when watching a film about brothers torn apart by circumstance and choice, and *Mr. Natwarlal* reaches for that tender nerve with genuine intent. The central premise—a man becoming a criminal kingpin to avenge his righteous brother's ruin—carries the weight of tragedy that Hindi cinema does so well. The director understands that revenge stories are really about loss, about the distance that grows between people who once shared everything. What works beautifully is this emotional architecture: Natwar sneaking away to apologize to his sleeping brother before heading toward darkness is the kind of small, devastating moment that lingers. The performances needed to carry this burden, and there are glimpses of real vulnerability beneath the underworld bravado, though the film occasionally gets tangled in its own melodrama rather than trusting the story's inherent power.
Where the narrative stumbles is in execution. The tiger, the diamond necklace, the elaborate heist elements—these all feel like scaffolding that sometimes obscures rather than strengthens the human core. A man-eating tiger is cinema spectacle, but it's also a distraction from what we truly came for: will these brothers find their way back to each other? The film tries to balance too many genres at once, pulling between thriller, heist, and family drama without fully committing to any. The direction doesn't quite have the precision to make all these threads sing together. Still,
Storyline
Natwar watches his world crumble when his beloved older brother Girdharilal, a righteous cop, gets framed for bribery by the ruthless criminal Vikram! Years later, a grown Natwar transforms himself into the mysterious underworld kingpin Mr. Natwarlal, nursing an obsession with revenge that consumes him entirely. His brother has no clue about his true mission and grows to despise this dangerous new identity—creating this heartbreaking rift between them.
The plot thickens when Natwar discovers that Mickey, a scarred underworld legend and Vikram's former partner, also has a vendetta against the bastard who betrayed him! Mickey reveals that Vikram's terrorizing an entire village called Chandanpur with a man-eating tiger, and he needs a rare diamond necklace to draw him out—a necklace that's locked away with Fakirchand. Natwar steals it like a ghost in the night, sneaking away to apologize to his sleeping brother before heading toward his destiny.
Natwar infiltrates Chandanpur disguised as Avtar Singh, a legendary hunter who Vikram had supposedly already murdered, and nobody's the wiser! The stage is set for an explosive confrontation where past sins will finally be reckoned with, where a man-eating tiger lurks, and where two brothers on opposite sides of the law might finally understand each other. Everything hinges on whether Natwar can bring Vikram to justice without destroying himself—or his brother—in the process.