Chak De India - A Review

OK, so I watched Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Chak De India the other day. Or rather, I was dragged to the movie, at least initially. I was skeptical about the movie for many reasons, with SRK's history of hamming through roles not being the least of them. And then, it was indeed a difficult concept to make a good movie about. I mean, the movie was about our national passion (not), hockey, and women's hockey at that, for crying out aloud. This would have been a difficult movie even for an old Hollywood hand to work on, leave alone most of our extremely (un)creative Bollywood producers: How do you direct a hit movie whose story revolves arounda gaggle of mostly-unattractive female players playing, to most minds, a decidedly unglamorous sport, and where the climax involved the women's hockey world championship finals. Hmm. And then there was also that Punjabi title: Who knew, the directory might just decide that the lady hockey players must also keep vrath for karva chauth as part of the preparations for the hockey world championship. But thankfully, director Shimit Amin did no such thing; a lesser director may, perhaps, have, and God knows we have plenty of them here to go around.

So, the story is about this wrongly disgraced Muslim Indian ex-hockey captain who seeks to redeem his honor by taking it upon himself to coach the Indian women's national hockey team, who are regarded by the Sports Authority of India's mandarins as basket cases. To cut a long story short, SRK does exactly that, which of course we should have expected, considering this was an S-R-K movie. He cannot have not done that. But what was interesting was the writer and director's interpretation in how the movie should play out. The tight script and direction kept me riveted to the seat as the hockey drama unfolded. And some fine acting from mostly unknown names most definitely added to the effect. And for once, SRK didn't ruin it with his anally retentive monologues.

Notables:

• The movie was refreshingly politically correct, without being too preachy, although a couple of times it teetered on the edge. For example: When the whole hockey team gets into a fist fight with some lecherous Delhi boys (surprise!) who are panting after some so-called "yellow" skin.
  
  
• The South Indians (singular rather) weren't dark, ugly, conniving losers. OK, maybe dark, and there's nothing wrong with that, but none of the other three. The director even decided to have a scene where the South Indian player (a Telugu character whose name I don't recall) is assumed to be a Tamilian (Telugu, Tamil, what's the difference, eh), and she promptly retorts to her North Indian interrogator that, yes, there's obviously no difference between Telugu and Tamil people, just as there's no difference between Punjabi and Bihari people :| So, whilst attempts were made to correct historically-flawed portrayals of South Indians in Hindi cinema, the director wasn't bending over backwards to make them look like super-cool characters either; they were just regular guys and girls, like everyone else. Which is good.
  
  You're probably wondering, at this point, why I'm discussing this particular point in such great detail, but I have this gigantic bee in my bonnet about how South Indians were viewed by North Indians in the past: As dark, stupid, ugly, conniving losers. Not by all North Indians, obviously, but by enough; unflattering portrayals in Hindi cinema seemed to speak for the rest. And I'm glad that has changed. Hindi cinema has finally caught up with reality, in more ways than one.
  
  
• Unfortunately, it looks like the Biharis/Jharkandis are the new South Indians, as far as Bollywood is concerned. They're depicted as dark, ugly, and not particularly bright. And they've been caricaturized in the most cardboardish manner. Sigh. Biharis/Jharkandis of the world, unite!
  
  
• As I said earlier, a movie that revolves around a sport is not the easiest to make. It's obvious that a lot of research has gone into the making of this movie; the parts of the movie that revolved around the world championship in Melbourne were strikingly realistic, and everything seemed to have fallen into place nicely. Many kudos!

All in all, a delightful little (or not-so-little, considering how much money may have been pumped into the Australian leg of the shooting) movie, that was came as a pleasant surprise. May there be more of director Shimit Amin's kind!