The Hero’s Walk Movie Review

The Hero’s Walk is a story about self-redemption, hope, and forgiveness. The movie is
about the regret that Sripathi Rao is facing due to banishing his daughter and his journey on
overcoming it. Starting with his inability to accept what has occurred and ending with acceptance
and understanding that he now has a second chance, to make amends with himself.
The movie starts in Lucknow, India, where Sripathi Rao (Paresh Rawal) is sitting on his
porch drinking tea when he gets a phone call regarding his daughter who he exiled for breaking
off her engagement and marrying a white man. He discovers that his daughter and her husband,
both died in a car crash, and now he’s the sole guardian of his granddaughter Nandana(Hrishaali
Malhotra).
In my opinion, the story gets interesting after they return to India. On one hand, you have
the story of Sripathi and his arc of self-redemption and realization that projecting a good image
in society isn’t more important than family, and on the other, you have Nanadana’s journey of
adapting to this new life without her parents. After returning we see Sripathi start to improve his
relations with his family and start appreciating them. We see his attitude towards his son change.
In the beginning, he expresses his annoyance at his son, calling him lazy and useless but near the
end of the movie he realizes that his son is actually doing an amazing job and he's being selfless
and taking care of the planet. I feel like the actor did an amazing job at bringing Sripathi to life.
He did justice to the character and the scene where he was going around looking for Nandana in
the rain you could see the fear and panic in his eyes, especially with the little panic attack he
ended up having because he was extremely frightened and he recalled a similar incident that
happened with Maya, and you could see the genuine fear of losing Nandana in his eyes. I think
no one else could have done a better job at portraying that character.
Nandana’s journey of adapting to living in a completely unknown place with people she
doesn’t know at all was also very interesting to watch. She was introduced as a very
happy-go-lucky little girl, who was just living life to the fullest, and all of a sudden her entire
world gets flipped around. I genuinely enjoyed how Harshaali bought the character to life.
Usually, with child actors, there are not that many expectations, but her performance was
phenomenal. The way she portrayed her emotions through her eyes was amazing. One scene that
stayed with me and was absolutely heartbreaking to watch was when her parents had left her at
their friend's house and they told her that her parents won’t be coming back; she still had that
glimmer of hope in her eyes because she thought that they were just joking and that her parents
were coming back but when she slowly started realizing they weren’t, the hope in her eyes
started diminishing, and she broke down. She really managed to express Nandana’s grief and
pain and I feel like this scene was one that stuck with a lot of people. After that night, she
stopped talking and conveyed her emotions through her eyes and I personally loved how as the
movie progressed we got to see the darkness and pain in her eyes replaced with happiness and
hope, and we got to see her return to her old self. I also enjoyed her relationship with her uncle,
Arun,(Akshay Kumar). Their duo was absolutely amazing. Akshay Kumar is known as a
comedic actor so having him in the movie really added some comedic relief which in my opinion
made the movie more enjoyable. One particular scene that I found really funny is when they
were playing cricket with all the kids in the middle of the street and one of them accidentally hit
someone’s car, and they all ran and hid in the alleys. I found that scene really funny and it was
also the first time we saw Nandana laugh after everything that happened.
Altogether I think this movie was very well portrayed. The cast, storyline everything felt
really authentic, and I enjoyed the fact that they stayed accurate to the essence of the book while
also adding more comedic relief to make the movie entertaining and enjoyable. I feel like this
movie was a stepping stone in breaking societal and social norms and showing people that just
because something was done a certain way in the past doesn’t mean that it should be continued in
the future.