A father trains his two daughters in wrestling to attain national pride.
Starring- Aamir Khan
Direction- Nitesh Tiwari
Dangal is spear headed by Aamir Khan’s brilliant portrayal. He carries off the various age specific roles and physical structure in perfection. Aamir starts off Mahavir as a youthful wrestler and transforms him into the older version. But the intensity and love he gives as Mahavir is consistent throughout the movie.
Fatima as Geeta did a great job for a newcomer and is able to hold her own against Aamir. Sanya as Babita did an equally if not better than Fatima, but sadly her role gets very little to go on. I felt Sanya was underutilised as she shined in her limited role.
Zaira Wasim and Suhani as the younger versions of the sisters were amazing and rocked the first half of the movie. Ritwik Sahore as the nephew has excellent comic timing and keeps the movie from being an outright grim movie.
The rest of the supporting cast do a good job. Girish Kulkarni as the coach unfortunately had a very one dimensional role to carry out.
The story for Dangal is an inspiring one which focuses on the wrestling sport and about giving females their due respect. The movie has a solid first half but it’s in the second half that the movie pushes its emotional lines even further. Just like the audience in the movie watching the fights, even we end up cheering for the sisters in each fight.
Direction by Nitesh Tiwari is perfect. The movie runs at a very good pace throughout its 3hr duration. It has powerful dialogues, drama and has comedy every now and then. The only issue I felt horrible was they had to insert a cliche towards the end of the movie. This one scene derailed the flow and for the first time reminded us that we are actually watching a Bollywood movie.
Overall, Dangal is a must watch movie and easily the best movie of the year!
Acting- 5/5
Story- 4.7/5
Direction- 5/5
Drama- 5/5