Sikandar
- Director
- Piyush Jha
- Studio
- Big Pictures
- Release Date
- 21 April 2009
- Language
- Hindi
- Budget
- ₹5.00 Cr
- Box Office
- ₹0.82 Cr
Review
Sikandar arrives as a haunting meditation on innocence destroyed by circumstance, and for stretches, it genuinely pierces the heart. The film's central tragedy—a traumatized boy finding a gun and becoming a pawn in Kashmir's brutal power struggles—has authentic emotional weight. The relationship between Sikandar and Nasreen crackles with genuine tension; you feel her desperation as she watches her friend slip into darkness, and there's real poignancy in how the system conspires to make his corruption inevitable. The director understands the mechanics of how desperation births violence, and when the film leans into character and consequence rather than spectacle, it commands your attention. The twist revealing Sikandar as a manufactured instrument rather than an autonomous agent is conceptually powerful—a grim indictment of how institutions weaponize the vulnerable.
Yet the execution falters where it matters most. The performances, while occasionally touching, struggle to sustain the emotional intensity required for such weighty material. The direction becomes uneven as the film progresses, lurching between character study and thriller mechanics without fully committing to either. Scenes that should devastate instead feel rushed; plot developments that need breathing room get suffocated by the pace. Most critically, the film's second half loses the intimate focus on Sikandar's moral deterioration and becomes consumed by larger geopolitical machinery—we stop watching a boy bre
Storyline
Sikandar's this heartbreaking 14-year-old kid in Kashmir who's already lost everything—his parents killed by militants a decade ago, now just trying to live quietly with his aunt and uncle in Kupwara and kick goals on the football field like a normal teenager. Then one fateful day he stumbles upon a gun on his way to a match, and despite his smart new friend Nasreen begging him to walk away, he picks it up and everything spirals into darkness. What makes this so gripping is how Nasreen becomes his moral compass, desperately trying to pull him back from the edge while he gets sucked deeper into situations spiraling beyond his control.
Bodies start piling up and it seems random at first, but the genius unfolds as you realize Sikandar's just a pawn in this massive, corrupt chess game between militants, the army, power-hungry politicians, and religious leaders all using him for their own ends. He's completely trapped—manipulated and controlled by forces so much bigger than a traumatized teenager—and you watch helplessly as the gun becomes his only language in a valley speaking violence. The tension is unbearable because you know he's innocent but nobody around him cares about his soul anymore.
Then comes the twist that hits like a gut punch—every piece clicks into place and you realize the entire tragedy of Sikandar's descent was orchestrated, a horrifying portrait of how broken systems and broken people manufacture terrorists from broken children. It's not just a thriller; it's a scathing indictment of how innocence gets weaponized when no one's looking out for the kids caught in the crossfire.
