Azhar

The limitations of not being really open and the writing that’s too filmy are the main drawbacks of the latest Emraan Hashmi starrer Azhar. I really don’t understand the logic giving an essay at the beginning of the movie on how we should not consider this movie as a biopic after using the real person for all the promotion purposes. If you belong to the newer generation who hasn’t got the chance to see Azhar in the Indian jersey, the drama may convince you.

Well most of you won’t need a brief about the movie. Azhar basically backtrack the life of the cricketer from the point where he legally got screwed. We get to know his childhood, his first marriage, his cricket, his second marriage and how the controversy happened etc. through the movie.

Even though the tagline sounds quite diplomatic, the movie isn’t exactly that diplomatic. Much like any film it is trying to justify its title protagonist. Now you might say that it’s the prejudice I have in my mind about the cricketer but I won’t agree. I don’t have the case diary or anything with me, but the matches which sort of shook the cricketing world weren’t mentioned prominently in the movie. Yes I am talking about the much controversial series against South Africa. Instead of focusing on the key match/ series the movie glorifies one instance where Azhar showed his patriotism after sort of agreeing to lose.

Emraan Hashmi in terms of body language and cricketing style has transformed in to Azhar. When it comes to acting, he is pretty much the same Emraan we have seen in his films. Prachi Desai looks good as the first wife Naureen. Nargis Fakhri was somewhat terrible as Sangeetha. Kunal Roy Kapoor was nice as the geeky lawyer friend. Lara Dutta was also fine playing the typical “topnotch” lawyer. Rajesh Sharma as the bookie was good.

Tony D’Souza has only tried to keep it very filmy. The lack of technical perfection which makes most of the sports oriented films in India look unreal is happening here also (except Chak De). The artificiality or filminess takes away the realness we expect in a movie like this. There is no real mystery at the end and it pretty much follows every clichés (I can say all this because they have given the disclaimer that everything shown in the movie is fiction). Scripting also has no intriguing structure to its credit. I liked the idea of using the “100 Tests” sentiment in that particular way you see in the movie and there is one scene towards the end where Azhar gives the advocate a dosage of how he feels when someone makes false allegation. The music was good. Cinematography could have been better. You can see typical Indian crowd in London – That shows the quality of edits and visual effects.

The film works occasionally through the filmy heroics we see on screen. I wont say the movie Azhar has succeeded in giving the retired cricketer the image he lost somewhere during this struggle. Azhar is an average drama presented as a typical bollywood movie.

Rating : 2/5