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Ah! There you go! You get all team building lessons right
here. From the difficulties of heading a team, being in a
team to performing in a team and achieving one's goals –it's
a perfect tutorial told in an enticing manner.
The film holds your attention right from the start –whether
it's the match Kabir Khan (played by Shahrukh Khan) loses,
his tryst with the media and how he is forced to leave hockey-his
beloved game. His disappearance from the spotlight into the
oblivion moves you.
It's an amazing campaign for Hockey – our national game, which
hasn't got its due recognition. It talks about the system,
about the game, about the spirit, about sportsmanship –above
all about human will.
The genre of sports film normally has a particular arc –you
know the ending and yet you will love watching Shah Rukh Khan
playing the leading man alongside 16 new girls. Jaideep Sahni's
well scripted story, etched-out characters and brilliant performances
(by Shah Rukh, Shilpa Shukla, Sagarika Ghatge and Chitrashi
Rawat) and amazing direction by Shimit Amin wins hands down.
Seven years later he appears again, not as a player but as
a coach of a bunch of girls in whom even the Hockey Federation
has no confidence. Kabir Khan has just three months to coach
and train these girls for the Hockey World Cup in Australia.
The girls come from all over India – Haryana, Chandigarh,
Punjab, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, North East and other states.
The interaction between the girls is well scripted and shot.
It makes you laugh, cry, gives you goose bumps, stirs up patriotism
inside you and makes you want to watch and play hockey.
Using very unconventional methods, Kabir Khan manages to create
a team spirit among the girls. But some differences remain,
only to be sorted out in the World Cup tournament in Australia,
which the team must win to make India proud. But Kabir Khan
is fighting for more than pride for India. For him the victory
would bring redemption (for his momentary failure 7 years
ago) and reclamation of his lost honour. And when that moment
of reckoning does come, he looks on with disbelief in his
teary eyes.
The movie has a number of intelligently conceived sequences.
For instance, a sequence when the girl's hockey team has to
prove their mettle against the men's team. The girls lose
by a narrow margin, but they get an applause and salutation
from male players or another sequence when the girls bash
up a bunch of eve teasers. These sequences and the last portions
of the second half – when the crucial matches are played –
evoke a flood of emotions inside a viewer.
The humour is vernacular, and genuinely funny at that. The
funniest of the lot is the rustic Haryanavi girl Komal (Chitrashi
Rawat) and the hot-tempered Punjabi girl Balbir Kaur (Tanya
Abrol). Though Shahrukh holds his own, the girls are no less.
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