Sanju
- Director
- Rajkumar Hirani
- Studio
- Vinod Chopra Films
- Release Date
- 28 June 2018
- Running Time
- 161 min
- Language
- Hindi
- Country
- India
- Budget
- ₹96.00 Cr
- Box Office
- ₹587.00 Cr
Review
Rajkumar Hirani's biographical drama is a masterclass in humanizing the unheroic—a film that refuses the conventional biopic template of redemption arcs and instead opts for messy, complicated truth-telling. Ranbir Kapoor's performance is nothing short of transformative; he inhabits Sanju Dutt's vulnerability with a rawness that recalls his best work in *Barfi!*, moving beyond mere impression into genuine psychological excavation. Hirani's direction is assured and empathetic, employing the framing device of Winnie's biography as a narrative anchor that prevents the film from becoming a mere chronological wallow. The screenplay intelligently intersperses the present-day interviews with meticulously crafted flashbacks, allowing the audience to witness the accumulation of pressures—paternal control, addiction, loss—that shaped this flawed man.
Where the film occasionally stumbles is in its tonal management; it swings between dark comedy, tragedy, and redemptive uplift without always finding equilibrium between these registers. The supporting cast, while competent, sometimes feels like they're inhabiting archetypal roles rather than fully realized characters—Paresh Rawal as Sunil Dutt trades nuance for emotional sledgehammer moments. Yet these are minor quibbles. What *Sanju* achieves, what distinguishes it from the glossy celebrity mythmaking that typically dominates Hindi cinema, is its refusal to judge. By allowing Sanju to speak his own narrative, contradictions and all, Hir
Storyline
So basically, this guy named Sanju Dutt is this Bollywood actor whose life has been pretty messy, and someone wants to write a biography about him. The Supreme Court has just sentenced him to prison for five years over some stuff related to the 1993 bombings, and his wife thinks getting his story out there through a proper biography might help his image. When a writer named Winnie starts looking into his life, Sanju's pretty upfront about some pretty wild personal stuff, which actually convinces her that he's being genuine and worth documenting.
The story then flashes back to show how things got so complicated for him. His famous dad was trying to launch his acting career in this film called Rocky back in the early '80s, but Sanju felt super controlled and pressured by his father on set. A friend of his named Zubin sort of convinces him to experiment with drugs, and unfortunately Sanju gets hooked right away. Things get even worse when his mom is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and has to go all the way to New York for treatment, which really pushes him further down a dark path with both drinking and drug use.
As Winnie digs deeper into his life through these interviews, we see how a privileged kid from a famous film family ends up spiraling into serious addiction issues. The movie shows how family pressures, bad influences, and devastating personal tragedies all pile up to create this complicated person. It's basically a journey through the making of someone whose life became pretty troubled despite having all the advantages you'd expect.
