It takes guts to make a film like Chak De. There’s always a huge risk involved. And trust me this is one of the riskiest films ever attempted by any director in Bollywood, if we talk about mainstream cinema. Even I being an SRK fan couldn’t help feeling that it might suffer because of the not -so-popular sportwitha bunch of women playing around in the promos. It looked dull and rather uninteresting.... until the time it released
SRK and Jaideep Sahni were the reasons why I went ahead to watch the film. My expectations were not too much. I was prayingfor it to be a watchable flick, mainly because of the high multiplex priceI had paid for it and didn’t want it wasted. But it did deliver, surpassing all my expectations. Made me want to jump and shout and cheer at regular intervals. In fact, very frequently.
Chak De India tells the story ofKabir Khan, adisgraced player, who voluntarily retires from the Indian Hockey time after a loss to Pakistan; exaggerately blown out of proportion by the media at the time. Not only is he forced to leave the team, but also his neighbourhood after many label him a traitor. He returns after a long hiatus to coach the Women’s Hockey Team, in order to revive his lost status in society. Although he has got the top 16 players selectedfrom all parts of India to prepare for the World Cup, he has many obstacles in his way, some of them being the association’s attitude towards Women’s Hockey; dealing with players with big fat egos; players who don’t know the meaning of team spirit; and of course, players whowould be willing to play for their states at best rather than for their country.
This has to be the biggest surprise of the year. I never expected Yashraj films, a banner which is known to ride formula films on its back, to come up with a film like this one. Kudos to Adi to allow creative freedom to the crewand delivera gem like this one. There are not enoughsongs in the narrative to hamper its pace but the ones that are (the title song, badal pe pav hain) are placed brilliantly. And nosnow caped mountains and mushy heros romancing their heroines.
Talking about the positives, there are many good scenes to count. My eyes were forever glued to the screen and SRK’s performance was a treat to watch, and so were the performances of every other actor. Coming back to Shahrukh, he proves to his detractors that he has much more potential beyond the umpteen Raj Rahulcharacters he has portrayed throughout his career. Because this is one performance which is bound to receive appreciation from even a hardcore critic of his. Devoid of any trademark lip quivering or raising of eyebrow expressions, this King Khan performance is underplayed and remarkable.
Screenplay by Jaideep Sahni is near perfect and this man will surely be in demand after this movie. After penning Company, Bunty aur Babli and Khosla ka Ghosla, he has achieved wonders with his writing in this one. Easily one of the best writers we have in India today.
Chak de .. will make you laugh out loud, will make you shed tears in parts, above all it makes you cheer.. and there’s a heavy dose of patriotism in it, which will make both the masses and classes root for it.
P.S. Indians are emotional by heart. They don’t like to think from their head while watching cinema.. and a film which has VICTORY AGAINST ALL ODDS as the central theme; no matter how skeptical it may sound, they are expected to lap it up. so flying colours for Chak De India. But whats more victorious for the film is the genius behind the screenplay. It picks some of the social evils in the society, imbibes them into the screenplay and yet leaves the film with a slight hint of traditional Bollywood masala!
and thats what I consider coming-of-age Bollywood, in a truer term than what most filmmakers claim!