Gajraj Rao Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Maidaan,’ starring Ajay Devgn

April 12, 2024

by Carla Hay

Ajay Devgn in “Maidaan” (Photo courtesy of Zee Studios)

Directed by Amit Sharma

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in India and other parts of the world, from 1952 to 1962, the dramatic film “Maidaan” features a predominantly Asian cast of characters (with some white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Against the odds, Syed Abdul Rahim, also known as Rahim Saab, takes India’s national soccer team, which was on a losing streak for years, to the Olympics and to the 1962 Asian Games.

Culture Audience: “Maidaan” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in sports biopics, movies about soccer, and stories about underestimated people who overcome challenges.

A scene from “Maidaan” (Photo courtesy of Zee Studios)

“Maidaan” did not need to be a three-hour movie, but this drama about soccer coach Syed Abdul Rahim, also known as Rahim Saab, is undoubtedly inspirational. The team players needed more character development, but the soccer matches are exhilarating. “Maidaan” is reliably predictable, mainly because what Rahim (played by Ajay Devgn), who was nicknamed S.A., achieved is already well-known to many people and is the type of subject matter that gets made into a movie like this one. However, “Maidaan” gives more insight into the behind-the-scenes challenges and the power struggles within the All India Football Federation that affected Rahim’s in his life and his quest to turn India’s national soccer team in to a world-class championship team.

Directed by Amit Sharma, “Maidaan” (which means “field” in Hindi) was co-written by Sharma, Saiwyn Quadras, Aman Rai and Atul Shahi. The movie takes place in chronological order, from 1952 to 1962, during which Rahim had a transformative reign as the head coach of India’s national soccer team. As “Maidaan” shows, it was a turbulent experience where Rahim got resistance at various times from certain members of the All India Football Federation board of directors, which votes for who will be the head coach.

“Maidaan” opens in 1952, with a scene that was unfortunately all too common for India’s national soccer team: The team loses a match. In this case’s India was playing against Yugoslavia’s national soccer team and lost in a humiliating 10-1 final score.

Rahim is shown in a conference room meeting with members of the All India Football Federation. At this point in his career, Rahim had been a teacher (with a college degree in arts), a professional soccer player, and a coach for soccer teams in his birthplace/hometown of Hyderabad, India. Rahim tells the assembled federation committee members that India’s national team has been on a losing streak for three main reasons:

The team members play in bare feet.
India’s domestic matches are 70 minutes each, while international teams have 90-minute matches.
Too much belief in old team stars who need to retire.

Rahim confidentially tells the federation committee that if they elect him to be the head coach of India’s national soccer team, he can help the team achieve something that the team had not achieved since it began doing international tours in 1924: Win a championship. Although there are some skeptics on the committee, Rahim gets enough votes to become the head coach. Rahim doesn’t promise quick success with this goal, but he is sure he can achieve this goal if he find the right team players. (In real life, Rahm became the head coach of India’s national team in 1950, not 1952.)

“Maidaan” then has the expected montage of Rahim traveling to various places in India (such as Calcutta, Punjab, Bombay and Kerala) to find the players who will be on his “dream team.” They include forward Tulsidas Balaram (played by Sushant Waydande); striker PK Banerjee (played by Chaitanya Sharma), who was the team’s captain for a period of time; goalkeeper Peter Thangaraj (played by Tejas Ravishankar); striker Neville D’Souza (played by Aryann Bhowmik); and striker Chuni Goswami (played by Amartya Ray). The casting for “Maidaan” is very admirable, since all of the actors portraying the star team members resemble the real-life people and are convincing as professional athletes. (For the purposes of this review, the characters in the movie are referred to by their first names.)

One of the first things that Rahim does that’s a revolution in Indian soccer is that he requires the team members to wear shoes, which obviously reduces cuts and bruises to the team members’ feet. “Maidaan” does a pretty good job of showing how this wasn’t an easy adjustment for most players, who were accustomed to being barefoot while playing the game. Getting shoes for the team members was also fraught with financial issues, because India’s cash-strapped national soccer team couldn’t afford large expenditures. n the early years, they often had to use previously owned or donated shoes.

The players themselves also needed a lot training in other areas. “Maidaan” shows that there was a lot of raw talent that Rahim had to hone into finely tuned and disciplined athleticism. When Rahim first meets Tulsidas, Rahim says that Tulsidas is talented but needs more stamina. PK is heartthrob with a large female fan base, so Rahim tells him not to get distracted by dating fans. Chuni is kind of a prima donna, so Rahim has to train Chuni to be more of a team player.

Meanwhile, during Rahim’s career that is depicted in the movie, he has two main adversaries: a powerful All India Football Federation board member Shubhankar (played by Rudranil Ghosh) and influential sports journalist Roy Chaudhary (played by Gajraj Rao), who were early and very vocal skeptics of Rahim. Because of their initial skepticism, Shubhankar and Roy want to be proven they were right, so they want to see Rahim fail, even if it means that India’s national soccer team will fail too. Various scheming ensues between these two manipulative haters.

As for Rahim’s personal life, it’s a secondary part of the story. He has a stereotypically loyal and loving wife at home named Saira (played by Priyamani), who is supportive of Rahim, even though she knows that his job requires him to frequently be away from home. Rahim and Saira have two children: son Hakim and daughter Seerat. In the beginning of the movie, Hakim (played by Devyansh Tapuriah) is about 9 years old, while Seerat (played by Nitashi Goel) is about 5 years old. Hakim as a teenager and young adult is played by Rishabh Joshi.

Rahim is obviously a workaholic, but the toll that it takes on his marriage seems a little too glossed over in the movie. Rahim’s frequent absences from home and obsession with soccer have caused him to have a somewhat distant relationship with Hakim, who desperately craves Rahim’s attention. It should come as no surprise that Hakim decides to become a player on India’s national soccer while still being an engineering student at a university.

Rahim took the team to the Asia Games and the Olympics more than once. The outcomes of these experiences won’t be revealed in this review. However, it’s enough to say that a big part of these experiences was how Rahim and the team dealt with racism and xenophobia. Rahim becomes under increasing pressure when a championship title becomes more elusive than he imagined. And, since this is a sports movie, there are the expected injuries that happen during crucial moments in or before a match.

Devgn gives an impressive (but not award-worthy) performance as Rahim, who is not presented as flawless or “too good to be true.” Rahim can be stubborn, impatient and arrogant. However, Rahim is also an empathetic and motivational leader who inspires his team instead of intimidating them.

The supporting cast members also do fine jobs in their roles, although Shubhankar is written as bit of a two-dimensional villain. Considering the movie’s three-hour runtime, there could have been more shown in the movie about the individual players. The most that viewers will see about the indivdual players’ personal lives is when PK tells Rahim that PK is distracted during a practice session because PK’s father has lung cancer. If you know what happened in real life to Rahim (a heavy smoker), then you will already know that Rahim will have his own health crisis in this story.

“Maidaan” has moments when the movie’s pacing drags. However, viewers who have the patience to keep watching will be rewarded in the movie’s final hour, which is the best part of the film. The 1962 Asian Games depicted in the movie have some adrenaline-charged, immersive scenes that will make viewers feel like they’re experiencing the matches right along with the players. A.R. Rahman’s stirring musical score also adeptly heightens the moods in each scene. “Maidaan” is not a groundbreaking sports movie, but it’s competently made, and it delivers exactly what it’s supposed to deliver in crowd-pleasing entertainment.

Zee Studios released “Maidaan” in U.S. cinemas and in India on April 10, 2024.

Review: ‘Satyaprem Ki Katha,’ starring Kartik Aaryan and Kiara Advani

July 2, 2023

by Carla Hay

“Satyaprem Ki Katha”

Directed by Sameer Vidwans

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city India, the dramatic film “Satyaprem Ki Katha” features an Indian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A goofy but nice underachiever gets into an arranged marriage with a woman from an affluent family, but she is reluctant to consummate their marriage because of secrets that she’s keeping.

Culture Audience: “Satyaprem Ki Katha” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching a romantic drama that isn’t a complete stereotype.

Kiara Advani and Kartik Aaryan in “Satyaprem Ki Katha” (Photo courtesy of FunAsia Films)

There is an over-used formula of romantic movies that goes like this: “Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy wins back the girl.” “Satyaprem Ki Katha” (which means “story of true love” in Hindi) has elements of this formula, but the movie isn’t a typical romantic film. At first, this engaging drama appears to be about a husband trying to romance his reluctant wife in an arranged marriage. “Satyaprem Ki Katha” becomes a more meaningful film in its sensitive portrayal of the wife’s sexuality and secrets.

Directed by Sameer Vidwans, “Satyaprem Ki Katha” (which takes place in an unnamed city in India) opens with a musical scene of male protagonist Satyapre, nicknamed Sattu (played by Kartik Aaryan) having a dream that he’s getting married. Sattu is a goofy underachiever, but he’s also hopeless romantic who wants to find his one true love. He lives with his father Narayan (played by Gajraj Rao), mother Diwali (played by Supriya Pathak) and his younger sister Sejal (played by Shikha Talsania) in a middle-class household. Narayan has tried to be an entrepreneur, but several of his businesses have failed.

Sattu soon meets and becomes infatuated with Katha (played by Kiara Advani), the daughter of an affluent businessman Harikishen (played by Siddharth Randeria), who expects her to be in an arranged marriage. Katha lives with her parents. Her sister is supportive Kinjal (played by Maira Doshi), and their mother is outspoken Rasna (played by Anuradha Patel), who also believes that Katha should be in an arranged marriage. Kinjal’s husband Dheeraj (played by Palash Tiwari) is also part of the this tight-knit family.

Sattu thinks that Katha is out of his league. He tries to get her attention anyway, but she doesn’t seem to be attracted to him. But then, to Sattu’s surprise, Katha’s parents decide that Sattu would make a good husband for Katha. Sattu and a reluctant Katha get married in an elaborate ceremony that has the over-the-top musical numbers that you might expect from a Bollywood film.

On their wedding night, Sattu tries to get intimate with Katha, but she rejects his advances. He confesses to her that he’s a virgin. He also says unconvincingly out loud to himself about Katha’s lack of sexual interest in him on their honeymoon night, “She must be tired.” Sattu is a gentleman and doesn’t force or pressure Katha to do anything she doesn’t want to do.

At this point, Sattu is in love with Katha, so he decides the best thing to do is to romance her so that she can fall in love with him too. However, she keeps rejecting him. One day, she blurts out why she doesn’t want to have sex with him: “I’m asexual.” She also explains that her lack of interest in sex is why her recent ex-boyfriend Tapan Manek (played by Arjun Aneja) dumped her.

There’s more to Katha’s story that she initially tells Sattu. There are enough hints that are shown in flashback scenes, by the time the truth is revealed, it’s not surprising. However, what is surprising is how the movie doesn’t take Katha’s secrets and turn them into a tawdry soap opera. Sattu’s reaction to finding out Katha’s secrets is the movie’s obvious way of saying that these matters should be handled with compassion and care—which isn’t an easy thing to do when a spouse reveals some shocking information.

As the spouses who go through an emotional ups and downs in their marriage, Aaryan and Advani have believable chemistry with each other. Their performances anchor the movie and keep it interesting, while the supporting cast members are perfectly fine in their roles. There are parts of “Satyaprem Ki Katha” that tend to get trivial when another musical scene is thrown into the movie. However, there are realistic portrayals about how family members would react to Katha’s big secrets.

Perhaps the biggest flaw of “Satyaprem Ki Katha” is that this 144-minute movie didn’t need to be this long. And the musical numbers, although dazzling, sometimes don’t fit the tone of this movie’s overall serious message. Still, even with some padding in the total running time and some fluffy song-and-dance numbers, “Satyaprem Ki Katha” gives its weighty subject matter enough substance that’s worth watching.

FunAsia Films released “Satyaprem Ki Katha” in select U.S. cinemas on June 30, 2023. The movie was released in India on June 29, 2023.

Review: ‘Bholaa,’ starring Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Sanjay Mishra, Deepak Dobriyal, Gajraj Rao and Vineet Kumar

March 30, 2023

by Carla Hay

“Bholaa”

Directed by Ajay Devgn

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in India, the action film “Bholaa” (a remake of 2019’s “Kaithi”) features an all-Indian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: A recently released prisoner agrees to help police fight and capture a drug cartel, in exchange for reuniting with his 10-year-old daughter, who has been placed in an orphanage.

Culture Audience: “Bholaa” will appeal primarily to people who fans of the movie’s headliners and who like watching mindless action movies that are more than two hours long.

Deepak Dobriyal in “Bholaa” (Photo courtesy of Panorama Studios and PVR Pictures)

“Bholaa” takes all the worst elements of bloated action flicks and puts them into this overly long, messy and idiotic film. The police in this movie are so stupid, they leave their police station unlocked and unstaffed while prisoners are inside. This time-wasting junk movie (which clocks in at a mind-numbing 144 minutes) includes every vacuous cliché of movies about cops versus criminals—a rebellious “hero,” who the unrealistic ability to survive violence that would kill most people; gravity-defying and unrealistic fight scenes; a “female in peril” subplot; and formulaic double-crossing and betrayals.

“Bholaa” is also one of the most worthless movies that you could ever seen in 3-D, since the 3-D format adds nothing meaningful to the movie’s action and visuals. Viewers who watch “Bholaa” in 3-D might forget they’re watching a 3-D movie. “Bholaa” was also released on some IMAX screens, which just means that viewers can see on a bigger screen how horrible “Bholaa” is on every level.

Directed by and starring Ajay Devgn, “Bholaa” is a remake of the 2019 Tamil language film “Kaithi.” Six people are credited with writing the “Bholaa” screenplay: Govind Bhana, Shridhar Dubey, Lokesh Kanagaraj, Aamil Keeyan Khan, Sandeep Kewlani and Ankush Singh. It’s never a good sign when so many people have screenwriter credits for one screenplay, because it’s usually a sign of “too many cooks in the kitchen” syndrome. In the case of “Bholaa,” these screenwriters cooked up a screenplay that should have been dumped in the garbage.

“Bholaa” is yet another action movie about a roguish protagonist who has to find a way to save a loved one while battling enemies in phony-looking fight scenes. Bholaa (played by Devgn) is a former gang leader who was sentenced to prison for his crimes, shortly after his doctor wife Swara (played by Amala Paul) was murdered by a rival gang leader. In the beginning of “Bholaa,” he is let out of prison, after serving a 10-year sentence.

Bholaa’s backstory is told as a flashback about midway through the movie, which has substandard film editing and makes the entire movie very muddled. The irony of Bholaa’s imprisonment was that he had given up his life of crime before he married Swara, who did not approve of his criminal lifestyle. However, Bholaa’s nefarious past caught up to him. Shortly before Swara was murdered, she had given birth to a daughter named Jyoti.

Because there were no other family members who could have taken custody of Jyoti after Bholaa was sentenced to prison, Jyoti was put in an orphanage. Now 10 years old, Jyoti (played by Hirva Trivedi) lives at the Saraswati Orphanage in Lucknow, India. She hears that someone has been trying to contact her, but the movie contrives a number of scenarios (some more ridiculous than others) for why Bholaa can’t reach Jyoti over the phone.

The most ludicrous-looking scenario shows Bholaa calling Jyoti on the orphanage phone while he’s driving a bus full of police officers, but then a Molotov cocktail is thrown through the front windshield, thereby cutting off the phone call before Bholaa gets a chance to have a conversation with Jyoti. And the movie expects viewers to believe that Bholaa has the phone number for Saraswati Orphanage, but he can’t figure out a way to find this orphanage. He also doesn’t know how to identify Jyoti when he sees a photo of children at the orphanage, even though her name hasn’t changed, and he could use the Internet or other resources to find out what she looks like.

There’s some nonsense about Bholaa putting ash on his forehead as a ritual, to signify the ashes of his slain foes. Bholaa also has a trident that is used for gruesome stabbings. All of these superficial gimmicks could have been left out of the movie and it still would’ve made no difference to this terribly written story and what happens in the end.

Before he can reunite with Jyoti, Bholaa finds out that he is being sought after by Inspector Diana Joseph (played by Tabu), who leads a team that has confiscated a large stash of cocaine worth ₹1 billion that was going to be trafficked by the notorious Sikka Gang. Diana is determined to capture the Sikka Gang, including its co-leaders: cunning Nithari (played by Vineet Kumar) and his loose-cannon younger brother Ashwathama, nicknamed Ashu (played by Deepak Dobriyal), who wears heavy eyeliner and frequently snorts cocaine. Diana wants Bholaa to help her capture this gang, as part of Bholaa’s parole.

During this cocaine confiscation, Diana and some of her fellow police officers were in a wild car chase and gun shootout on a highway, where Diana was firing a gun from a police car driving backwards. It’s the movie’s opening scene. Diana gets wounded in her left arm, and wears a sling throughout the rest of the movie. But her injured arm is often “forgotten” in fight scenes where Diana moves her left arm as if she has no injuries at all. It’s just more of the sloppy filmmaking of “Bholaa” on display.

Nithari ends up in a jail cell at the police station with other prisoners in the same cell. There’s a long segment of the movie where Diana and her police force leave the station unattended and unlocked so they can go looking for the Sikka Gang. Yes, that’s how foolish this movie is. A group of college students (three males and one female) are visiting a prisoner and are confused that there are no police at this police station. A prisoner asks one of the students to get the jail cell key that’s hanging on a nearby wall.

All of sudden, a 55-year-old constable from another precinct shows up and stops the student from handing over the key. The constable’s name is Angad Yadav (played by Sanjay Mishra), and he becomes a liaison over the phone for Diana in dealing with the Sikka Gang, while he mans the police station all by himself. Does any of this tripe make sense to you? It shouldn’t, because “Bholaa” is hell-bent on being as illogical as possible.

On the outside, Ashwathama finds out there’s an unidentified informant in the Sikka Gang who has been leaking important Skikka Gang information to the police. Ashwathama decides the best way to find the informant would be to kidnap Diana and torture the information out of her. And so, there’s another long stretch of the movie were the Sikka Gang goes after Diana, whom Ashwathama insists should be captured alive. Ashwathama tells his gang members that he doesn’t care if anyone else they fight ends up dying.

There are three other police officers who play roles in this silly story. Devraj Subramaniam (played by Gajraj Rao) and Deep Singh (played by Lokesh Mittal) are both corrupt, while Kadchi (played by Amir Khan) is Diana’s buffoonish sidekick. Kadchi is more comfortable being a office guy who looks at statistics rather than being in the middle of violent fights.

Almost every imaginable act of violence is shown in “Bholaa.” And it all becomes empty and monotonous after a while, especially after multiple scenes where Bholaa takes and defeats several men at the same time. And in typical fashion for action schlock that’s all style and no substance, “Bholaa” has a bombastic and blaring soundtrack music, as if the “Bholaa” filmmakers think that loud music is supposed to make all the stupidity better. There’s absolutely no suspense in “Bholaa,” which just regurgitates the same type of dreck that can be found in dozens of other big-budget, low-quality action movies.

Panorama Studios and PVR Pictures released “Bholaa” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on March 30, 2023.