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Anupam Kher as Manmohan Singh is a studied act

After the trailer of Thackeray, on the life of the late Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray, came out yesterday, we now get a glimpse of another political film, The Accidental Prime Minister, on Manmohan Singh’s stint as India’s prime minister.

The film is based on the 2014 book, The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh, and the trailer portrays Manmohan Singh as a victim of the Gandhi family’s political games.

In 2004, Sonia Gandhi, president of the Congress party, asked Manmohan Singh, known to be a clean politician and the man who led the reform of India’s economy back in 1991, to take up the top job after she had led the United Progressive Alliance to a dramatic victory over the National Democratic Alliance government.

The film delves into the reasons why the finance minister who liberalized the economy a decade earlier struggled to take tough decisions during his term as prime minister.

While Kher seems to have worked hard to get the body language and mannerisms of Manmohan Singh right, the voice modulation, done in an attempt to make the voice thinner and softer, is inconsistent.

The trailer shows how Manmohan Singh’s attempts at taking a firm stand and resolving big problems like the crucial Indo-US nuclear deal and the Kashmir issue were thwarted, allegedly by Sonia Gandhi and the Congress party.

Akshaye Khanna plays the role of Manmohan Singh’s first media adviser Sanjaya Baru, who wrote the original book in the form of memoirs, and a lot of the story seems to be told from his point of view. Not surprisingly, Khanna grabs your attention every time he appears in the trailer. 

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With the 2019 general election around the corner and a lot at stake for both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress, this film could set off a political storm when it is released on 11 January 2019.

Watch The Accidental Prime Minister trailer below and let us know if you are keen to watch this film in the theatres. 

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