Cast: Upendra Limaye, Sanjay Jadhav, Pravin Tarde, Neha Shitole, Abhidya Bhave, Anand Ingale, Siddeshwar Zadbhuke, Hansraj Jagtap, Jeevan Karalkar, Sharayu Sonavane, Chinmay Sant,Chinmay Patwardhan, Rupesh Bane, Suyash Shirke, Ninad Tambade
Director: Mangesh Kanthale
Rating: * *
Yet another sports-inspiration film with Kabbadi as its game of choice, this attempted entertainer has a bunch of misfits bunking school, engaging in petty misdemeanours and loitering around before they gain redemption with a championship cup winning show at the district level Kabbadi school games.
It’s quite ironic that a narrative that seeks to tell the story of a bunch of hooligans (with Kabaddi as their only talent), has very little or nothing to show of the sport in the first hour or so. This glaring inconsistency showcases the lack of co-ordination in the entire set-up and allows for very little attachment.
Also the boys are allowed to misbehave and get away with extreme misbehaviour, offered mere rebukes before being expelled and even though they steal the form for the tournament from the Principal’s office and input their names as the selected team, it gets glorified and overlooked because they are suddenly in a position to win the title. And in convoluted, after-thought justification he even opines that the tournament was a way of proving their worth to the naysayers of the village.
Even the climactic sequence involving a sort of repentance for wrongdoing is like an eye-wash when much more serious misdemeanours are overlooked for this gain.
The scripting is unaccomplished, the direction, irresolute and the performance – pretty much lacklustre. There’s obviously a convoluted patriarchal mind-set at play here -which doesn’t sit well in the schema of redemption that the writers have conjured-up. The luminous presence of National Award winning Upendra Limaye and DOP turned actor Sanjay Jadhav in the cast does little to relieve the inconsistency and tedium of this hollow offering!
