Truth be told, we fell for the pre-release hype of R Madhavan’s Saala Khadoos - it claimed to be based on ‘true life events’, had Rajkumar Hirani as the producer, and was to cast a ‘real’ boxer playing the lead character of a pugilist. But, Saala Khadoos fails on all counts and more.
It didn’t help that comparisons were made with Chak De!, Million Dollar Baby and Mary Kom, for this film is not a sports drama. In fact, Saala Khadoos is your run-of-the-mill story of coach and his student.
The movie starts on a high note – Adi Tomar( R Madhavan) is an obnoxious, cynical boxer-turned-coach, wronged time and again by the federation chief( Zakir Hussain) and a corrupt system crumbling from political interference.
A high-octane sequence establishes the enmity between Madhavan and Hussain. And that is all the energy the movie manages to pack into it. What follows is over-the-top melodrama aimed at playing to the gallery.