You can also see that it’s been made to clear the real player’s name: a court did over-turn the ban but the whole process took so long that it became besides the point. The film remains strangely ambivalent about its hero while mouthing ‘seeti-maar’ dialogue about ‘desh’ and ‘qaum’: to have made the point the way it needed to be made, the film needed to have been braver and sharper.
Alas, this bio-pic has no teeth. Oops, sorry, this ain’t no bio-pic, ‘coz, look momma, it names no names.