Striker - Strikes Slowly & Steadily.
Hate has a reason for everything. Love is unreasonable.
There was a time when we used to go for a movie for entertainment & relaxation after a hectic day’s work without demanding logic for each and every scene. Movies were purely a source of entertainment.
When I read the negative reviews of Toh Baat Pakki, Immediately I dropped watching the movie. I wanted to watch this movie for Tabbu, she is one of my favourite actress. I preferred to watch striker. Anyhow thanks for the self appointed critics for guiding us must watch & not to watch movies.
To be honest, I didn’t had any great expectations from Striker. Even the promos weren’t too exciting. The movie was lost between Ishqiya & My Name Is Khan.
Carrom is one of the most popular indoor games in India, mostly played with relatives and friends. It is a game of entertainment and rules are put to one side to a minimum.
On the other side, Carrom is also extremely popular in the slums of India, played mostly outdoors, in street corners. Many who play this game are unemployed youth to pass time & earn part time income. Sometimes I wonder why carom, the popular game did not get the attention it deserved all these years?
Since past few years, specially after the success of Lagaan, Bollywood directors seems to be scoring of late with story concepts related to sports. Except movies like Chak De India & Iqbal no other movie succeeded to add new flavors to the most passionate games of the country.
Striker is not a film about promoting the popular but neglected indoor game Carrom, The movie is based on true life accounts, set in a Mumbai in the mid eighties. It is the story of a friendship, life in the city of dreams. Malvani a suburb in Mumbai which remained free for communal tension till early nineties.
Two childhood buddies, from different religions, Surya (Siddharth) & Zaid (Ankur Vakil) try to lead a life of normalcy, despite the shadow of crime and communalism. Striker is a story of a Carrom player Suray (Siddhart) who grows up on the fringes of a criminal existence but does not succumb to it.
Surya a poor guy introduced to carrom by his elder brother and goes on to become a junior carrom champ at the age of twelve. The movie traces twenty years in the life of this character as he gets duped of his hard earned money and returns to his favourite sport, carrom, but this time for a different motive.
The high point of the movie is its heartwarming tale and its performances. Siddharth has given a decent performance after Rang De Basanti. He is only getting better with every film. He makes a sincere effort and the honesty shows in a number of scenes.
Aditya Pancholi has proven time and again that he is a good actor. He is in top form after a long time. Acts in his own way to add life to his character.The other interesting characters are South Indian actress Padma Priya acts for the first time in Hindi movie, Chak De Inda famed goal keeper, Vidya Malvade, Anupam Kher, Seema Bishwas and model Nicolate Bard have been gelled well into the story. The movie has some good emotional scenes and some power packed dialogues.
Director Chandan Arora makes a sincere effort to make different cinema. His earlier two movies Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon and Main, Meri Patni aur woh, were different but not good enough to rule the box office.
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