Then logic greeted my emotional response to the film and reminded me no one needs a military grade machine gun for personal protection. Yet somehow this movie convinced me that the media, over eager for juicy headlines, was completely at fault for villain-izing a man for trying to protect his family from death threats. Owning an AK-56 is not the mistake of an immature child, it is the terrible choice of a fully grown adult. But even with that disclaimer, it must be admitted that it’s hard not to fall for it, and fall hard.

And that’s where the caveat for everyone intending to see this movie should lie: “Sanju” is not any sort of empirical truth about the life of Sanjay Dutt, but very much Sanjay Dutt’s colored side of the story, made by a film industry sympathetic to him, and with similar biases of being misrepresented by the media - though not for charges nearly so egregious. “Sanju” is a brilliantly made movie, making audiences feel and think and want to know more, but the fact that it is openly a biopic of an incredibly famous son of an incredibly famous father betray clear biases. At times, you are even on the edge of your seat, wondering what is about to happen even though the majority of us know how this story turns out. “Sanju” pokes at your heart, even as your brain suspects this might be nearly 3 hours of propaganda to which you have willingly subjected yourself. Sound familiar? This era is the perfect market for a story like this, and Rajkumar Hirani does a great job telling it.

Sanju movie reviews