And it's a GOOOOOOAAAAAAL!

Chak de India review

I have never been a big fan of KHAN CLAN. Apart from making Bollywood a fatter purse, I believed their contribution to the art of film making is relatively less. Lately Aamir Khan tried to be an exception and succeeded in a big way. I admire Aamir for taking that initiative. Shah Rukh stayed glued to his image in all his movies. And the sad part is that image of Shah Rukh sells like hot cakes without any boundaries. Shah Rukh Khan is a hot commodity. He always sells, when he plays himself. But unless you try to experiment with your image, you won’t know the saleability.

Except Swades, SRK never experimented with his screen image. He always played SRK on screen. While it is true that Yash Chopras, Karan Johars are to be blamed partially for this stagnancy, but with the kind of influence he holds in Bollywood, SRK could have easily experimented a lot more.

Just for that reason, I loved CHAK DE INDIA!
There’s no Shah Rukh Khan in the movie! There’s a character named Kabir Khan, who goes through all kinds of emotions during his journey from a disgraced Indian national hockey player(a muslim by religion), who’s blamed for throwing the match to Pakistan, to inspiring a women’s national hockey team to World Cup victory. Amazing journey!

Shah Rukh Khan plays Kabir Khan like Kabir Khan, the disgraced coach with GADDAR label on his head. There’s no trace of SRK in the whole movie.

I’m slightly biased about CHAK DE because I always loved good sports movies. It’s not an easy task to make good sports movie fitting in all the saleable emotions. Especially in India where we hardly follow sports like women’s hockey and more so, media hardly covers what happens off the field. Yes, cricket is an exception!

The climax of any sports movie is always predictable. The underdogs always win through some hic ups. We don’t make sports movies to show tragedy! But it’s the journey of the underdogs which makes any sports movie a gripping tale. The hic ups in the journey are more interesting. Chak De scores in that aspect.
The sixteen girls do look like they belong to Indian hockey team (I would have hated to see Ranis, Kareenas or Aishwaryas in any of their places) And some of them act like they are like that only. The pint sized Komal (Rawat) is the surprise element in the whole package. She’s so natural and swift.

The screen play scores without any jerk. The plot doesn’t stay with an emotion for long. Every scene establishes an impact and moves fast. It’s very easy to make such movies boring, by a stretched scene. The dialogues are sharp relying largely on acting.

The on field shots take you along the ball as if you’re moving with the players. 100% professional! I’m not too impressed with the predictable climax. May be it could have been more gripping.Especially people who watch lots of sports on tv find the climax boring. But the scene I loved most is the one, where women’s team play men’s team and trailing behind by 3 goals they make a comeback in the second half but still manage to score only two goals losing the match. While it was everyone’s guess that the women will comeback and beat the men’s team, the director displays his ace by making the women lose the match but still win the hearts of men’s hockey players and the Hockey board! It’s always a pleasure to be surprised in a movie.
Finally three cheers to the King Khan for accepting such a role and making it a memorable one (May be his best so far). More kudos for taking up such a movie, because SRK always pulls crowds. And the audience go out of the theatre with a positive attitude towards sports. It’s like campaigning for a social cause. Hope SRK takes a cue and does more meaningful films. Power multiplies when you use it for a CHANGE.

PS: There’s a character of Indian cricketer called Abhimanyu Singh, who’s dating one of the hockey players. It reminded me of Yuvraj Singh! Though I never heard of him dating any hockey player, the character looked more like him. May be it reminded you of him too!