Somewhere in the second half of the Ali Abbas Zafar film Randeep Hooda, who plays the coach of wrestler Sultan(Salman Khan) says of him: “Jat hai na asli(Isn’t he a true blue jat)”. I was immensely amused by the unwitting irony embedded in the line. That a real off-screen jat should be giving brownie points to an eminently faux on-screen one sporting a laboured, indistinct Haryanvi accent that flits in and out of his mouth at its own sweet will and discretion. Not that my observation matters. Even the Haryanvis amongst his die-hard fans will cross swords with me for making that disapproving comment. But then Sultan(or for that matter any other Bhai film) has to be seen as independently of his crazy fans and their riotous reactions at Galaxy as of his infamous “rape” remarks.
So let me stick my neck out and say that the Haryanvi and the Haryana in the film are cringingly irritating. As is the accented English of the in-film Aaj Tak reporter(the willing suspension of disbelief be damned). Just a month back there was the much reviled Laal Rang, starring Hooda that got the rough and rustic lingo and earthy humour spot on. Here the accent itself becomes a joke. A juvenile, inane one at that. Saying “yo sai(it is)”, sory for sorry and test for taste doesn’t make things authentically Haryanvi but wildly witty for the fans it seems. However, I still can’t fathom what was so funny about the Chyawanprash, “Baby ko bass pasand hai” and “sit(shit) boy” jokes There’s a moment somewhere in the beginning of the film when Salman Khan’s character comes to a halt at a rail crossing, and waits, just like the rest of us do, for the train to pass.
In that instant we know that Sultan is about to push twin boundaries. Of a star’s scope, and of mainstream Bollywood. That this will not be the super-human, super-hero Bhai who has been shown crossing the tracks just a whisker ahead of a rushing locomotive from one of his several forgettable flicks. That this will be a Khan who has to, literally, do a lot of heavy-lifting to win the crown. And win it he does. ‘Sultan’ has him breaking free from Bhai-giri bondage by getting his character to crack and bleed. His down-and-out wrestler has foibles, is fallible, is human. Sultan Ali Khan has faults, and is punished for it. Because of which Sultan scores, and delivers a solid entertainer with heft. It isn’t as if Sultan doesn’t struggle with its profusion of familiar tropes.
There’s your underdog-to-champion, in which child-like Jat Sultan is shown starting from nothing, becoming a world champion in no time at all(yes, there is some sweat and tears involved in the training, but not too much, because hey, this is Bollywood). There’s a romance which involves risible songs and dialogue( ‘Baby ko bass pasand hai’, with a shift-and-lift-of-male-and-female derriers). But the girl in question, played by Anushka Sharma with sparkle, is a wrestler herself. She is a woman with ambition, and she’s made to talk of uplifting ‘mothers’ and ‘sisters’ in patriarchal Jatland