I feel sad for the Deol family. Dharmendra's magic era is over, Sunny Deol is repeated over and over again and Bobby Deol is not up to the class of either of the former two. Now from their family stable they try to create a movie that would evoke strong Jat feelings. When this movie was announced and promos shown, I did not expect much from this movie. CNN-IBN review rated it very poor 1 out of 5, and the audience reviews were okay. So my hopes for this movie really dwindled down. But for the sake for Dharmendra I sat through the movie.
The story is about Baldev Singh Choudhary (Dharmendra) a silver medalist in Olympics who is dis-qualified from fighting the world heavy weight championship due to false doping charges. He builds his hopes on his elder son Angad (Sunny Deol) who is not interested in boxing but makes a career as Agriculture products exporter and there is always a tension between father and son; while Dharmendra's younger son Karan (Bobby Deol) is interested in music. But after one of the students of Baldev Singh insults him, Karan takes the challenge to make a career in boxing. In the boxing bout in United States Karan looses due to a foul play with the World Heavy Weight Boxing Champion Luca (Jonnie Brown) and Angad comes into the frame of things to take revenge of his brother's defeat and live his father's dream by defeating Luca.
The Director Anil Sharma has tried to cater to Indian audiences taste by bringing in the whole family emotions, inter-cutting with some (poor) comedy, songs, drama in the first half varies the second half mostly focuses on the boxing matches and fights.
Surely for film audiences who have grown up seeing Rocky boxing fights in the 1980s would find this movie a B-grade stuff. But for North Indian audiences, I think this movie will still work magic. Dharmendra who always gets a raw deal in not getting good role, has given a power house performance by his lion hearted character. He captures the screen and brings olden day memories back to forth; Sunny Deol has usual is very good and matches the scenes with his Dad Dharmendra equally. The weakest link in the movie is Bobby Deol who looks so unconvincing to carry on any part be of a rock star musician or a boxer.
The first half of the movie is much better than the second half were it sinks to unnecessary melo-drama of olden day movies. I was not impressed by the boxing arena set too. It looked too Indian even though it was in USA. The musical score was good and Himesh Reshamiya has given his nasal sounding melodies that would become popular for time being. I also liked the background score that jelled very well with the tempo and various scenes of the movie.
The heroines characters Shilpa Shetty and Katrina Kaif sadly does not have to do much, nor does Kiron Kher has much part to play in this movie.
The direction could have been much tighter. This was the only chance for the three members of the Deol family to be together and that's it, I do not think it will happen again.
Some scenes are quite emotional and bring tears to the eyes, while Sunny's entry into accepting the challenge to fight brings back electrifying memories of his Punjabi puttar's image. It was really hard to see Bobby Deol with floppy chest standing to fight a world champion I did not know where to hide my face.
I think CNN-IBN was too harsh on criticizing and rating the movie, may be he is a typical multiplex high class audience who are remote from Bollywood front benchers! This is a Bollywood movie that would do good business especially in North India and smaller towns.
(Stars 5.5 out of 10)
The story is about Baldev Singh Choudhary (Dharmendra) a silver medalist in Olympics who is dis-qualified from fighting the world heavy weight championship due to false doping charges. He builds his hopes on his elder son Angad (Sunny Deol) who is not interested in boxing but makes a career as Agriculture products exporter and there is always a tension between father and son; while Dharmendra's younger son Karan (Bobby Deol) is interested in music. But after one of the students of Baldev Singh insults him, Karan takes the challenge to make a career in boxing. In the boxing bout in United States Karan looses due to a foul play with the World Heavy Weight Boxing Champion Luca (Jonnie Brown) and Angad comes into the frame of things to take revenge of his brother's defeat and live his father's dream by defeating Luca.
The Director Anil Sharma has tried to cater to Indian audiences taste by bringing in the whole family emotions, inter-cutting with some (poor) comedy, songs, drama in the first half varies the second half mostly focuses on the boxing matches and fights.
Surely for film audiences who have grown up seeing Rocky boxing fights in the 1980s would find this movie a B-grade stuff. But for North Indian audiences, I think this movie will still work magic. Dharmendra who always gets a raw deal in not getting good role, has given a power house performance by his lion hearted character. He captures the screen and brings olden day memories back to forth; Sunny Deol has usual is very good and matches the scenes with his Dad Dharmendra equally. The weakest link in the movie is Bobby Deol who looks so unconvincing to carry on any part be of a rock star musician or a boxer.
The first half of the movie is much better than the second half were it sinks to unnecessary melo-drama of olden day movies. I was not impressed by the boxing arena set too. It looked too Indian even though it was in USA. The musical score was good and Himesh Reshamiya has given his nasal sounding melodies that would become popular for time being. I also liked the background score that jelled very well with the tempo and various scenes of the movie.
The heroines characters Shilpa Shetty and Katrina Kaif sadly does not have to do much, nor does Kiron Kher has much part to play in this movie.
The direction could have been much tighter. This was the only chance for the three members of the Deol family to be together and that's it, I do not think it will happen again.
Some scenes are quite emotional and bring tears to the eyes, while Sunny's entry into accepting the challenge to fight brings back electrifying memories of his Punjabi puttar's image. It was really hard to see Bobby Deol with floppy chest standing to fight a world champion I did not know where to hide my face.
I think CNN-IBN was too harsh on criticizing and rating the movie, may be he is a typical multiplex high class audience who are remote from Bollywood front benchers! This is a Bollywood movie that would do good business especially in North India and smaller towns.
(Stars 5.5 out of 10)