Review of Punjabi Movie Once Upon A Time In Amritsar starring Dilpreet Dhillon, Gurjind Maan, Pawan Malhotra, B.N. Sharma, Tanvi Nagi. Directed by Harjit Singh Ricky

Star cast: Dilpreet Dhillon, Gurjind Maan, Tanvi Nagi, Sonia Kaur, Pawan Malhotra, Arun Bal, B.N. Sharma, Shavinder Mahal, Dolly Minhas, Asish Duggal

Director: Harjit Singh Ricky
Producer: Mohit Banwait
Music: Desi Crew, Diljit Singh, Gold Boy, Pavneet Virgi, Gurcharan Singh & Arvinder Singh
Running Time: 116 Minutes (U/A Rating)

Synopsis: OUATIA is the story of 2 youngsters played by Dilpreet Dhillon & Gurjind Maan. They are graduates from Khalsa College, Amritsar but unfortunately do not find any sort of jobs. One day, at Shri Harmandir Sahib they come across Ashish Duggal, who portrays himself as an Amritdhari Sikh but is a terrorist in actual. They inform the police about their suspicions, but the SHO played by Pawan Malhotra refuses to believe them. Then they both take it upon themselves to understand the motive of the terrorists and stop their evil intentions. Will they be able to prevent the deadly attack? Will the heroes lose their lives? Will Amritsar be bombed? Watch the film to know the answers…

Review: Director Harjit Singh Ricky, after having made the disastrous Sirphire and the torturing and disastrous Jatt Airways is back after 3 years with his next flick, Once Upon A Time In Amritsar. Thankfully, this time his film was bearable. But ‘bearable’ doesn’t mean that the film was good. There were many elements which went against the film and we shall analyse them one by one.

Story of the film has been written by the lead actor Gurjind Maan himself. Gurjind wrote a story which sounded pretty interesting on paper, but the screenplay which he shared with Harjit Singh Ricky ruined what was a good & interesting idea on paper. The screenplay lacked any sort of meat or interesting elements which could hold the interest of the viewer except for the Intermission scene where I thought that now the 2nd half would be interesting but alas I was proven wrong.

The screenplay was moving in many different directions. The writers brought in many plots but many of the questions were left unanswered. And for both the romantic songs, they were completely unwanted and hurt the pace of the film. The songs were well shot but if they are unwanted they might seem to be irritating in the film. Dialogues by Gurjind Maan were nothing extraordinary and were just about all right. I couldn’t carry any sort of good dialogues back with me.

Director Harjit Singh Ricky, returns to the mix of things after a gap of 3 years but he hasn’t improved at all. Thankfully, the film wasn’t as bad as Jatt Airways but it wasn’t any good either. Harjit it seems to me that can shoot the film technically but there is much more to a director than technical aspects. He needs to be a good story teller of he is to become a good director. Unfortunately, he might be technically sound but he ain’t a good storyteller. Also he got a team of pretty decent actors in the support cast and failed to extract the good out of them.

Coming to acting, Singer turned actor Dilpreet Dhillon makes his acting debut with this film. He was similar to what he was in his songs: Gunday No. 1, Gunday Returns, Gulaab, etc. During action scenes, he had the same expression throughout and during the other scenes, it looked like he was just speaking the dialogues without any expressions at all. Overall, I am disappointed with Dhillon’s acting in the film. Gurjind Maan who made his big screen debut alongside Dhillon, was pretty good. Most of the scenes of both the actors were together so Maan saved the grace in many scenes.

Support cast had many names, but not many great performances. Shavinder Mahal was just about par. Pawan Malhotra was average. B.N. Sharma was under utilised. Prince KJ Singh was wasted. Producer Mohit Banwait played a character as well. He was not that great with his acting. The actresses Tanvi Nagi and Sonia Kaur, had a total of 5 scenes in total and 1 song each and no dialogues. One of them played a mute character and other didn’t have any dialogues. So both of them didn’t do any acting, so can’t comment on that but they were wasted in the film as well.

Music of the film was above average. Munda Ambarsariya and the song by Nachattar Gill in the opening credits were all right. Thats about it.

Overall, OUATIA was a pretty average affair. The film could’ve been better with better actors, direction, screenplay. But unfortunately it isn’t!