Sardar Udham (2021) on Netflix
TV-MA20212h 44mBiographyCrimeDrama
In Amritsar in 1919, Udham Singh survives the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Twenty-one years later he is in London under aliases, hunting Michael O'Dwyer, the man who governed Punjab then.
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- Netflix4.5/5
- IMDb8.3/1051,338 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes95%
Trailer
Plot summary
Udham Singh works at a textile mill in Amritsar, where the mute worker Reshma is close to him. On April 13, 1919, with the backing of O'Dwyer's administration, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer sends troops into Jallianwala Bagh, where they fire on a peaceful crowd of more than twenty thousand. Udham is asleep when the firing begins and wakes when a wounded friend reaches him. At the walled garden he spends the night with a few volunteers, searching for survivors among the bodies and carrying the wounded to a makeshift clinic, and vows to make the men behind the massacre answer for it. Years later, released from a Punjab prison, he slips away from his colonial watchers, crosses the USSR and takes a cargo ship to London, where he lives under aliases, sells goods, welds metal and tracks Michael O'Dwyer.
Cast
- Albrekht Tsanderas Junior Detective
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sardar Udham (2021)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Four days before filming began, Vicky Kaushal injured his cheek while shooting another film and needed 13 stitches. Director Shoojit Sircar told him to come anyway, saying Udham Singh would also have stitches, so Kaushal shot his scenes with the real scar on his face.
- The lead role of Udham Singh was first offered to Irrfan Khan, with his son Babil Khan reported to play the younger Udham. Health problems forced Irrfan Khan out, and he insisted that Vicky Kaushal take the part.
- Shoojit Sircar first pitched a film on Udham Singh back in the mid-1990s, after reading about him as a student at Delhi's Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, but waited two decades to make it while researching Udham Singh's life.
- Not allowed to shoot the incidents at Jallianwala Bagh, the makers recreated portions of them on empty sets in Punjab, and some scenes were also shot at Hoshiarpur.
- With India under COVID-19 lockdown, editing started on 8 June 2020 under Shoojit Sircar's four-phase plan: only the director, editor Chandrashkehar Prajapati and his assistants were allowed in the editing room, keeping social distance and finishing before the 7 p.m. curfew.
- Producer Iqbal Dhillon sent Vicky Kaushal and Shoojit Sircar a public notice claiming copyright over the Udham Singh biopic, saying he and Surjit Movies were sole and exclusive owners of all rights to the earlier Punjabi and Hindustani film Shaheed Udham Singh.
- Shortlisted among 14 other Indian films for the 94th Academy Awards' Best International Film slot, Sardar Udham was not selected; jurors Indraadip Dasgupta and Sumit Basu criticised its length and delayed climax, and Basu said it projects "hatred towards the British".
