Bhaag Milkha Bhaag REVIEWS - Page 21

PUNJAB !!

The land of brave fighters who join the armed forces...

The land of green wheat fields sprawling as far as the eye can see...

...And of people who eat and drink with gusto and dance with abandon...

The land of good looking people who dominate Bollywood...

And a land of hard tillers of the soil...

But it's also the a land of grave misfortune...

For every invader of India from Alexander the great to Ahmed Shah Abdali invaded India through the land of the five rivers...

And the invading armies raped and pillaged and destroyed and killed again and again...

But the punjabis had not been sitting idly while india was being trodden and ruled and fooled by foreign conquerers.

In the midst of all the mayhem a new religion had been born - sikhism.
the religion created by guru nanak was given a militant bent by guru gobind singh.

And a race of mighty warriors was born...

And not just mighty warriors but large hearted sportsmen who gave their all in every game...

This movie is the story of just such a sportsman...

They called him the flying sikh...

Milkha Singh was a true Sardar ; a real son of Punjab...

A man who like every Sardarji suffered in the trauma of India's partition as his land near Multan went to Pakistan...

And he saw with his own eyes as his family was brutally murdered by marauding Pakistanis in a feast of blood when he was of tender years...

Only he and his sister ( played by Divya Dutta ) escaped to start a new life in India...

And in spite of the horrors he had gone through he managed to rise like a phoenix from the ashes like only a Sardarji can...

He had to face the tough existence of a refugee camp in India where his sister's brutish husband mistreated her in front of his very eyes...

And he learnt to face and fight the big bullies in the camp by using sharp knives and hard kicks in the groin...

As a means of survival in his grim condition as a refugee who had lost everything he joined a gang of coal robbers who robbed the coal from train engines...

His winning personality and eye catching antics soon made him popular in his village...

And he managed to get the attention of a girl he liked ( played by Sonam Kapoor )...

To win her heart and get respectability he decided to join the armed forces...

It was a life changing decision...

For here his athletic talents came to be discovered and he was molded into the sportsman he became...

Even here life was tough all the way...

Rival sportsmen were not averse to using violence to push him out of the race...

When he visited his village he found out that the girl he loved had been married off forcibly to another man...

But he managed to triumph over all the odds by going on to win medals in international sporting events...

The director has shown all this well in a long and somewhat slow paced film...

The film has some moving scenes showing Milkha's hard struggle to win the race not only of track and field but also the race of life...

For some real doses of emotion watch the scene where Milkha returns to Pakistan for a sporting event and tearfully revisits the village where his family was killed...

Also watch the scene where Milkha comes back and puts all his medals on his coach's neck chocking the coach ( played superbly by Pawan Malhotra ) with emotion...

And for empathy and sympathy watch the bonding between Milkha and his ever loyal ever supportive sister---some great acting by Divya Dutta here...

But the real acting effort is by Farhan Akhtar who has put heart and soul into his role---you can see the blood sweat and tears of a real athlete...

Of course , I found some parts to be too filmy---how come Milkha breaks the national record when he is running with his legs injured badly and in bandages ??

And did he really romance and go to bed with a blonde and blue eyed stunning Australian beauty or was the director taking some cinematic liberty to show some filmy romance and sex scenes in order to increase the market value of the film ?? I dont know...

What I know is the fact that towards the end the audience in the cinema hall was beginning to cheer Milkha's sporting feats---and they clapped loudly with patriotic pride as Milkha won against Pakistani runners in the races he ran...

So they liked the film...

And I liked it too...

Verdict---good .

PJ ?@Prakashjaaju5s

[quote]
And did he really romance and go to bed with a blonde and blue eyed stunning Australian beauty or was the director taking some cinematic liberty to show some filmy romance and sex scenes in order to increase the market value of the film ?? I dont know...[/quote]
Yes, apparently. I did read an interview where someone asked the question and Milkha said how some of his flings ended up in derailing him from his goal etc. - I think that's how it's shown in the movie, right?

I love how Prasoon writes these characters though, could have easily typically demonized the "gora" woman or western culture like we often do to imply our cultural superiority. Thankfully that didn't happen. Of course except a few films like Lagaan etc. that is.