I must say I’ve not seen many Sohail Khan films, but I am really starting to respect him after seeing him in Lakeer and now this, both as an actor and a producer. He is such an intense actor, and in terms of looks, it’s as if Arbaaz Khan and Salman Khan have been combined. A very underrated actor if I say so myself.
In particular Sohail Khan seems to have a natural flair for raw fight scenes, especially boxing. He’s probably trained in boxing, because he’s a complete natural and the expressions are so realistic, that his scenes could be real. So not surprisingly he’s done boxing scenes in many of his films. In this, in Lakeer, in the upcoming Aryan and most probably in the upcoming Fight Club. I am actually looking forward to them now.
I-Proud To be An Indian feels like a very natural film and much more realistic than your usual Bollywood film. It is based on the simple story of a gang of white supremacist skinheads who are terrorizing the entire ethnic community, headed by Cain, a 7 foot muscular giant that would be fit for pro wrestling - some kind of power freak. When Sohail Khan is brought from India by his father for a better life in the UK and lives with his sisters family, he discovers it is not a better life at all, the community live in constant fear of the skinheads and despite brutalities inflicted on them, including murdering a Sikh couple at night, they do not report to the police. When Sohail Khan learns about them, when they harass his sister and attempt to rape her, he goes out and beats them. What he doesn’t know that he’s set himself up and the family as a target. What ensues is that he and his family are now constantly harassed, from sending dead animals through the post box, to covering his father in white paint and beating him when he’s coming back from shopping. Sohail Khan visits their base, which is no other than an old British pub with the union jack and instigates a fight with them and is arrested by the police. When he’s released, Cain orders his gang not to harm him, saying that he has not yet seen fear in his eyes and until he doesn’t he will live. So the skinheads now try to break Sohail Khan.
The acting is really good, even from the skinheads, especially Cain whose glance alone creates terror. It is rare for the British(white) cast to act well in a Bollywood film. Unfortunately all of their solo-scenes are done with a Hindi voiceover explaining what they are talking about, as I believe was done in Mangal Pandey and it does get annoying. The rest is very authentic drama, natural dialogue, natural performances and it really does feel like a British Asian family and the ambience feels British as well. The fight scenes are a highlight, they are very realistically caught at their most raw and gorey. The production values are low, with the lighting being quite bad in some scenes, but it is better in the boxing ring scenes. The editing can be quite crude at times with some scenes abruptly ending.
The songs, while never intrusive, are just okay. The climax errs on being unrealistic. After Sohail Khan takes so many punches from Cain, his whole face is bloodied up and he’s almost completely unconscious, then for him to suddenly bounce back from what really would have been point of no return just makes it predictable.
The climax could have been done better. I felt that turning the climax into the usual hero fights villain and tries to save the people, while they look on, didn’t send a powerful message. Instead, what I would have hoped was that after he was rendered unconscious, that people in the crowd would have got up and fought otherwise what the film shows is that as long as Sohail Khan is there they are safe, but suppose he went away? What would the community do then? After all gangs are like Hydras, if you cut one head off, a new one appears. The skinheads wouldn’t have been set back forever after(spoiler) Cain being arrested, the next most dominant of them would have risen. It sends a more powerful message to deal with racism like this for the entire community to rise against it. I think they could have also shown more crowd racism scenes, such as entire groups of Indians being taunted with racial insults to show how serious this was.
This is a good film and a very intense film; it could have been better though. There is a lot of bad and racist language in the film, violence and gore.