Sardar Udham movie review: Shoojit Sircar’s Sardar Udham is a long, unhurried re-creation of a turbulent slice of India’s colonial past, going back and forth from Punjab to London, with a few detours here and there.
March 13, 1940, London. An Indian man walks into an orderly meeting where Michael O’Dwyer, former Lt governor of the Punjab province, is delivering a lecture on the legacy of the white man’s burden, and how, under British rule, the ‘Indian savages’ have been brought under control.
The man waits till the speech is over, walks across the room to face Dwyer (Shaun Scott) and shoots at him point-blank. The latter falls to the ground, blood pooling around him. Udham Singh (Vicky Kaushal) has finally accomplished what he had vowed twenty years ago, after his traumatic witnessing of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. General Dyer (Andrew Havill) may have given the orders to fire on those hundreds of peaceful protestors, men, women and children, but it was Dwyer who had pressed the button. For Udham Singh, revenge is cold, but it is as sweet.