REVIEW 731: THE ZOYA FACTOR

Release date:	September 20, 2019
Director:	Abhishek Sharma
Cast: Language:	Sonam Kapoor Ahuja, Dulquer Salmaan, Angad Bedi, Sikandar Kher, Sanjay Kapoor, Manu Rishi Chadha, Abhilash Chaudhary, Udit Arora, Narrator: Shah Rukh Khan Hindi and English

On the face of it, The Zoya Factor is about an ordinary girl catapulted into extraordinary circumstances when some Indian cricketers start seeing her as their lucky mascot and she simultaneously becomes romantically involved with the team captain. There is more to this Hindi-English film though, as there was to the bestselling English novel by Anuja Chauhan on which it is based.

Director Abhishek Sharma’s The Zoya Factor stars Sonam Kapoor Ahuja as Zoya Solanki, a junior copywriter in a top-notch advertising agency. Zoya hates cricket but her father (Sanjay Kapoor) and elder brother (Sikandar Kher) are as mad about the game as the rest of the country. Her sibling, Major Zorawar Solanki, once considered her lucky for his street cricket team because they would win each time she ate breakfast with them before a match. Zoya recounts this story to national-level players while on an ad assignment with them, setting off a chain of events that results in her being deemed their good-luck charm as India goes into the World Cup. 

While the public and media go bonkers over this overnight star, on a parallel track Zoya and team skipper Nikhil Khoda are falling in love.

The Zoya Factor by Anuja Chauhan worked because it used a giddy romance and an intentionally over-the-top tale of superstition to place the spotlight on the ridiculousness that is Indian cricket fandom, the latter ultimately becoming a metaphor for so much that is wrong with India as a whole. If you are among those inclined to consider the story improbable and exaggerated, just look around you at the mumbo jumbo pervading our lives and espoused even by public figures, ranging from fear of mirrors breaking and cats crossing our paths to the insistence on entering an important venue with this foot first and not that. 

The film adds to the nuttiness with an understated layer of dismay at the hyper-deshbhakti now dominating the Indian public discourse that was not yet our reality when the book was released about a decade back. 

The result is a largely entertaining swipe at superstition and a non-preachy endorsement of hard work over irrational gimmicks. The Zoya Factor does not always have its act together, but it is never less than crazy fun. 

Curiously enough, where the film does not hit home is in the writing of its heroine. If it is called The Zoya Factor, you would expect it to be focused on Zoya, yet the character is given little depth and expanse in the screenplay by Pradhuman Singh Mall and Neha Sharma, which is a particularly disappointing turn of events considering that Chauhan herself gets an “additional screenplay” credit. Like many Hindi film writers, this team too sidelines their female lead as the narrative rolls along, instead pivoting The Zoya Factor’s second half primarily on Nikhil Khoda, his colleagues and desi mania. 

It does not help that at first Sonam overdoes Zoya’s ditsiness. She gets better as the character appears to mature, becomes a tough-as-nails businesswoman in a fit of fury and glams up for good measure, but by then Zoya has taken a backseat to Nikhil in the narrative. Still, coming as it does after Neerja, Veere Di Wedding and Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, this role feels like a step back in her filmography. 

Since The Zoya Factor’s writers and director have chosen to invest more in Nikhil Khoda than in Zoya, they were wise to cast Dulquer Salmaan as their hero. DQ, as he is known to his fans, is already a superstar in the Malayalam film industry and has also ventured into Tamil and Telugu cinema with great success. His unassuming handsomeness, acting versatility and instinct for good scripts have earned him a huge audience following, box-office success and critical acclaim since he debuted in 2012. Along with stars such as Fahadh Faasil, Nivin Pauly and Parvathy Thiruvothu, this has made him one of the flagbearers of the ongoing Mollywood renaissance led by directors such as Aashiq Abu, Anjali Menon, Dileesh Pothan and Lijo Jose Pellissery. irrespective of their shortcomings, his two films in Bollywood so far – Karwaan and now The Zoya Factor – reflect the same desire to be commercially viable without being conventional that has been the hallmark of his career path till now. 

Dulquer is incredibly likeable as Nikhil Khoda, complementing his good looks and astonishing proficiency in languages (very impressive Hindi diction, Mista!) with an easygoing acting style so charming that I found myself drawn into even the film’s cricket matches despite being – like Zoya – a cricket hater. (Aside: it is disturbing to see all-round nice guy Nikhil getting slightly rough with Zoya in a scene in which they have a showdown. This happens in passing but merits a mention in a society that tends to normalise intimate partner violence in real life.)

The film overlays its themes with a sense of humour that is hard to resist even when it is being unabashedly silly. A guest appearance by Anil Kapoor proves to be a hoot. And when the going gets grim in Zoya and Nikhil’s lives, a nameless faceless commentator clearly modelled on Navjot Singh Sidhu belts out a steady stream of Sidhuisms, exulting over a “vaahiyaat (horrid) ball” that turns into a six, packing his remarks with cultural and current affairs referencing, an unrelenting flow of similes and rhymes such as, “Saare manjhe khiladi ho gaye out, India is going to lose no doubt” (words to that effect). A big shabaash to Anant Singh for his writing of the commentary, which is voiced by Sahil Vaid and Singh himself.  

Despite the light touch, make no mistake about this: this film means serious business. In an era when several significant Bollywood personalities have chosen to turn pro-establishment and sing hosannas to the present government and its boss, it takes courage to mention any opposition neta with respect, but The Zoya Factor does – right at the start. In an era when the mob is gradually being normalised, Zorawar cautions Zoya about pedestalisation by those who, as he puts it, are capable too of setting her on fire in the name of “deshbhakti”. 

“Shraddha” and “desh” later trip off the tongue of an individual who is willing to sell his soul and his desh for personal gain. In this troubled era that The Zoya Factor inhabits, director Abhishek Sharma does not do any of the things several of his industry colleagues have been doing in films peddling an aggressive nationalist agenda through sports and/or war.

So yes, The Zoya Factor trips up on a very crucial front, but where it works, it works well, being funny and thoughtful all at once, in addition, of course, to being an opportunity for over two hours of DQ gazing.

Rating (out of five stars): **3/4

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	136 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/the-zoya-factor-movie-review-sonam-dulquer-starrer-is-a-fun-but-faltering-swipe-at-hyper-deshbhakti-and-superstition-7373811.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/DQSalmaan/

REVIEW 616: SOORMA

Release date:	July 13, 2018
Director:	Shaad Ali
Cast: Language:	Diljit Dosanjh, Angad Bedi, Taapsee Pannu, Vijay Raaz, Danish Husain, Kulbhushan Kharbanda Hindi

You do not have to be a sports buff to enjoy a good sports biopic. There is something about the blood, sweat, tears and toil poured into any sporting arena that holds out an impossibly irresistible allure for filmmakers and audiences – perhaps because the boxing ring, the wrestling mat, tennis courts and running tracks mirror all life’s struggles off the field within that limited physical space, even when you know nothing of the technicalities involved. Now imagine that starting block advantage combined with a deeply inspiring true saga of the sort on which Soorma is based.

Director Shaad Ali’s new film is about the life of Indian hockey player and Arjuna awardee Sandeep Singh, whose rise to the international circuit was interrupted by a freak accident. Singh’s incredible grit led to his recovery from a potentially career-ending injury. He went on to lead India to victory in the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in Malaysia in 2009, and was part of the Indian team that qualified for the Olympics in 2012 after a drought.

As commercial Bollywood veterans might point out, iss kahaani main drama hai, emotion hai, romance hai, naach-gaana hai aur twist bhi (this story has drama, emotion, romance, song ‘n’ dance and a twist) – in short, all the ingredients that tend to please conventional audiences. And in the first half, Ali (who earlier directed Saathiya and Bunty Aur Babli) and his co-writers Suyash Trivedi and Siva Ananth mine each of these elements to come up with an entertaining mix.

Sandeep a.k.a. Sunny, as they portray him, is a rebellious kid who abandons hockey out of anger towards a violent, bullying coach but returns to it nine years later – as a still rebellious somewhat immature adult – to impress a pretty girl. Harpreet is a gifted hockey player who aspires to represent India in the game. As their romance and Sunny’s training progress, he evolves as an athlete but is jolted out of his immaturity as a human being only by that life-altering calamity.

So far so good, pre-interval. Diljit Dosanjh is cute as Sunny. The popular singer-turned-actor manages to capture the mischief and silliness of a young man who is fixated on the woman he loves and simultaneously unaware of his rare talent. Taapsee Pannu’s athletic frame is perfectly suited to her role as Harpreet, and she occasionally manages to get to the heart of her character’s passion for her game and affection for Sunny although she is written with far less depth than the male protagonist.

Before the break, the scenes of their training are convincing and the matches Sunny plays, thanks to Chirantan Das’ clever camerawork and Farooq Hundekar’s keen editing, are utterly gripping. As someone who does not care a fig about most sport, I found myself cheering each time Sunny scored a goal and willing him to win. This, to my mind, is the ultimate test for the depiction of any sport in cinema.

Shankar Ehsaan Loy’s songs – though not on a par with their brilliant soundtrack for Meghna Gulzar’s Raazi earlier this year – fit well into Soorma. I particularly enjoyed the unapologetic Bollywoodness in the way the music directors and Ali use the hook “padhariye padhariye” in a musical interlude to celebrate Sunny’s early successes.

Against this backdrop, Soorma also brings us the heartwarming bond Sunny shares with his elder brother Bikramjeet Singh (Angad Bedi) who is a hockey player and his mentor. Bedi is really good here, as he always is, but I am tired of watching him only in supporting roles, when all I can think of each time I see him is: when on earth will his industry realise that this man is leading man material? This is an actor who fills the screen with his presence, is handsome, hot and can act till kingdom come as we know from Pink, Dear Zindagi and even F.A.L.T.U. What are you waiting for, Bollywood?

Back to this film, the hockey matches continue to be well shot and the gentlemen’s acting continues to be effective even in the second half, but the film itself becomes far less exciting for two very obvious reasons. First, it completely fails during Sunny’s recovery from his injury. And second, the portrayal of the Sunny-Harpreet relationship is oddly awkward, as though the writing team was trying to be clever and philosophical about the whole affair, but could not quite get it.

What makes the real Sandeep Singh’s journey so unique is the manner in which he managed to physically and mentally lift himself up from an incapacitating disability. Yet for some reason, instead of entering his mind through that part of the film, Ali & Co decide to step back and observe him completely from the outside. So from a distance we watch hospital processes playing out as a song plays in the background, but we do not get an insight into Sunny’s internal struggles during those passages – unlike the preceding well-handled scenes when he first realises that his career may possibly have been destroyed by a casual but cruel turn of events.

The path to his rehabilitation centre is immersive. From the moment he gets there though, Soorma becomes superficial.

To make matters worse, Harpreet in the second half suddenly becomes a spare wheel in Sunny’s tale, with motivations that come across as flimsy and somewhat stupid. The result is that the excitement is lost and the narrative becomes insipid.

Sunny’s own motivations also become pretentiously lofty when he returns to hockey. Initially he played for Harpreet, then to win over her family, and finally out of commitment to India. At no point is he shown playing out of unbridled enthusiasm for hockey. While there is something very endearing about the goal of “India khelna hai” (I want to play for India) that is almost a refrain in Soorma, and it is obvious from interviews with many great sportspersons that playing for the country is a massive high, it is hard to believe that that alone could push an individual to unprecedented heights if love of the sport itself does not drive them, irrespective of what their additional compulsions may be. Other sports films by Bollywood have understood that well. The biopics Bhaag Milkha Bhaag and Mary Kom did. Anurag Kashyap’s fantastic Mukkabaaz did too, just this year. And with a vastly different tale to tell, Tigmanshu Dhulia’s excellent Paan Singh Tomar strode into the heart and mind of its hero to ensure that his journey, joy and pain become ours as much as his.

Soorma (which means “warrior”) does that to a certain extent, but just when it needed to give us an inside view of Sandeep Singh’s life, it inexplicably decides to become an aloof observer. Since I did not know about this remarkable man before watching this film (sorry, sports buffs, but that is the truth), I am glad I did. But it is a pity that Ali and his team manage to draw us into the pages of his world only up to a point but mess up the most important chapter. Diljit Dosanjh and Angad Bedi are always worth watching, but the film should have been a lot more than what it ends up being.

Rating (out of five stars): **

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	2 hours 11 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/soorma-movie-review-diljit-dosanjh-is-lovable-in-a-biopic-thats-not-as-inspiring-as-the-true-story-it-draws-on-4730811.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/SoormaDiljitDosanjhWithTaapseePannu/

REVIEW 553: TIGER ZINDA HAI

Release date:	December 22, 2017
Director:	Ali Abbas Zafar
Cast: Language:	Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif, Angad Bedi, Kumud Mishra, Girish Karnad Hindi

“Yeh toh puri army lekar aa gaye hai,” a scared Indian nurse says at one point as she looks out of the window and sees ISIS troops landing up in droves at a hospital in Iraq where she and her colleagues have been held captive.

“Ghabrao mat,” says her companion, an Indian RAW agent, “abhi Tiger zinda hai.”

Literally translated, those last three words – which are also this film's title – simply mean that someone called Tiger is alive. But since this is conventional commercial Bollywood fare and the aforesaid Tiger is played by a certain Mister Salman Khan, they are also a metaphor for “all is well with the world kyunki (to borrow and adapt a signature phrase from the works of another iconic Khan) Salman hai naa”.

How foolish are the governments, policy analysts, intelligence agencies and academics of the world investing time and money in figuring out how to bring ISIS to its knees. They should have known that the solution lies in the muscular arms and golden heart of a character played by Salman.

Tiger Zinda Hai’s strength is that it is unapologetic about its stupidity. And so, although it is for the most part simplistic in the socio-political statements it lays on thick, it is packed with so much action that it ends up being a fun, even if clichéd, Bollywood-and-Bond-style masala flick which, if you are looking closely enough, does make a subversive point or two.

Writer-director Ali Abbas Zafar’s film is a sequel to Kabir Khan’s 2012 hit Ek Tha Tiger in which Salman played Indian espionage agent Avinash Singh Rathore a.k.a. Manish Chandra a.k.a. Tiger who, while on a mission, falls in love with a Pakistani spy called Zoya (Katrina Kaif). Tiger Zinda Hai continues where Ek Tha Tiger left off. Zoya and Avinash have quit their respective agencies and are now living in hiding along with their son Junior. Their calm life is interrupted when RAW seeks Tiger’s help to free a bunch of Indian nurses who have been taken as hostages in Iraq.

The opening text acknowledges that the film is inspired by true events. The reference here is to an episode in 2014 involving 46 Indian nurses who were held at a hospital in Tikrit, caught between ISIS and Iraqi government forces. This remarkable real life drama was chronicled beautifully by Mollywood earlier this year in Take Off starring Parvathy, Kunchacko Boban and Fahadh Faasil. The Malayalam film though was told through the eyes of one of the nurses who was at the forefront of the rescue effort and who, by coordinating with the Indian Embassy in Iraq, ultimately helped get herself and her colleagues back to India. Bollywood’s take on this well-documented episode from our contemporary history sets this woman firmly aside (along with the embassy, the governments of India and Kerala) and revolves around a single man instead.

If you have seen the sobre, credible, realistic yet supremely entertaining Take Off you may understand why Tiger Zindagi Hai feels so ridiculous in comparison and so shamefully male-centric. It took considerable strength of will this morning to put that film out of my mind while I watched Tiger take the reins and make a meal of ISIS. (For the record, ISIS is called ISC here, and Tikrit is Ikrit.) I was rewarded for my efforts with humour – some intentional, some not – and intermittent adrenaline rushes.

Both Salman and Katrina are limited actors, but they are charismatic and pleasing to the eyes here as always. Katrina is convincing enough in her action scenes to make you wonder why it has not occurred to any Bollywood director to cast her along with perhaps Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra in an all-out action flick centred around women. Salman has been heavy on his feet in recent years, but a combination of well-planned stunt choreography and clever camerawork ensures that we are not aware of that at any point in this film, unlike in Ek Tha Tiger in which he looked visibly tired.

Tiger Zinda Hai is a slick production (though the background score’s jarring resemblance to Don’s music is distracting) and the fisticuffs in it are enjoyable. It also clearly means well in most political matters even though it feels the need to underline its messaging repeatedly and plays to the gallery in an India that is increasingly demanding chest-thumping proof of patriotism from all its citizens and is openly suspicious of minority communities. So, Tiger and the other characters stress and re-stress their love for India with lines such as this one from Zoya: “Sab log samajhte hai ki duniya mein sabse zyaada pyaar tum mujhse karte ho lekin mujhe pata hai ki tum mujhse bhi zyaada apne desh se pyaar karte ho” (everyone thinks that you love me the most in this world, but I know that you love your country even more than you love me). Tiger’s Muslim colleague gives triple evidence of his desh prem. And since the audience cannot be trusted to appreciate that theirs is a culturally disparate team, we are reminded of its Hindu-Muslim-Sikh composition in a pointed exchange between Tiger and his teammate (Angad Bedi) about what it means to be a sardar. We should have seen that coming considering that early on, in a scene in which Katrina’s Zoya bashes up a bunch of goons, the writer felt the need to throw in a character dispensing a line about this being an example of women’s empowerment. Does an audience that supports dumbed-down cinema lose the right to complain about spoonfeeding? Perhaps.

To be fair, Tiger Zinda Hai is not as tacky or loud as Gadar, a film it references with a mention of Sunny Deol’s infamous handpump-uprooting scene in which he scared off the entire Pakistan Army with a bellow. Tiger inhabits a Bollywood that has evolved to a stage where Pakistanis can now be shown as allies in the face of a common enemy, and one character, when confronted over Pakistan’s wrongdoings in Kashmir, gets away with implying that India’s hands are not clean either. Considering the divisive times we live in, even this fleeting scene, sadly, is an act of courage that needs to be lauded, as does another contrived passage involving national flags that pushes the envelope up to a point (though without crossing a certain line). Even the ISC members we meet are not entirely satanic.

Tiger Zinda Hai’s supporting cast is a mixed bag. Kumud Mishra manages to be comical without allowing his comedy to become incongruous in this grim setting. Paresh Rawal, however, overdoes his villainous labour contractor. The handsome Angad Bedi is impressive in a small role that does not challenge him as much as last year’s Pink but still reminds us that this man is hero material. 

Tiger Zinda Hai is not a film that is meant to be taken too seriously. I mean c’mon, Salman/Tiger takes off his shirt for no reason at all to give ISC/ISIS and us a generous view of his fabulously toned and oiled torso and arms in a scene that does not even bother to offer a logical excuse for his shirtlessness. And after engineering the escape of those nurses, Tiger and Zoya dance to an item song playing along with the credits. I laughed through these two stereotypical scenes because by this point I had given up gasping with exasperation and had surrendered myself to the idiosyncrasies and ludicrousness of the genre (the genre being Bollywood masala). If you can see Tiger Zinda Hai for what it is, you too may not mind its unabashed blend of swag, silliness and schmaltz.

  

Rating (out of five stars): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	161 minutes

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/tiger-zinda-hai-movie-review-salman-katrina-deliver-fun-with-equal-parts-swag-silliness-and-schmaltz-4271153.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Zinda_Hai