Eklavya

Eklavya is a great movie. The storyline is pretty engaging - I was always predicting the next sequence and turned out it to wrong :). It revolves around a Rana (played by boman irani), his sort of body guard -  eklavya (played by Amitabh), his wife, brother and children. The movie is full of royal secrets, murders, interesting tales on these murders.
The cinematography is ultimate and looks like desi movies are competing with hollywood in this area. Acting was great as expected from such a star cast.
Overall a must see - esp. if you like engaging story lines .

i think this movie fell below my expectations, somehow i find the characters flawed, here is my take...

@eklavya - amitabh

he is considered to be a legendary guard with his 9 generations serving the royal family... he is supposed to do his duty when he helps the royal family get the prince (get the rani pregnant) but somehow he ends up falling in love with her... what was the deal about keeping scarf of rani... all the movie he is speaking about the "doing his dharma/ karma" but i dont see his actions consistent with what he says... besides may be he was a legendary guard (the movie does not give much details) but now at the age of 54 he cannot pretty much see anything, he was bound to fail in his duties (or doing his dharma)... when he failed to guard the king he weeps with guilt of not being able to perform his duties but what was the deal about burning the scarf of rani... that meant as if the rani caused him to fail in his duties which did not seem obvious... perhaps another angle to such actions is that he wanted to destroy the memories of rani, but why?... he has fatherly affection for saif but again in doing so he was failing in his duties...

@rani - sharmila

though it is shown that boman is not the biological father of saif but it is never clear that he was a bad parenting father... still sharmila polarizes saif like anything to save amitabh... was it a silent love story between sharmila and amitabh?...

@prince harshwardhan - saif

again counterpart of what sharmila tells her, he is all up against boman to save amitabh... to the extent that he gets boman killed... it is not clear at all that boman was a bad parenting father... he chooses to play the prince or the son of amitabh as it suits him...

@panna laal chauhaar - sanjay dutt

his role was too small, he is pretty much wasted...

@jyotiwardhan and udayvardhan - jackie and jimmy

definitely not the strongest characters... perhaps definitely not tea drinkers either :-)...

overall if you look at the movie, at the end it seems that it could have been very well a conspiracy by amitabh and saif to get the kingdom... with saif declaring amitabh as his father and all... amitabh choosed to not follow his dharma or duties as it suited him... the justification is that eklavya learns his lesson (from the incident of giving his thumb to guru dronacharya)... another lesson i take from the movie is that the strongest of characters fail in their duties when their blood comes into picture, perhaps a lesson for mother of boman that kameshti yagna shud have been with someone else...