paan singh tomar review - Page 5

The miracle of 'Paan Singh Tomar' at the box office

The box office collections jumped to Rs. 4.5 crore on the opening weekend thanks to word of mouth

It was a film that its producers UTV had no faith in. Even though Tigmanshu Dhulia's Paan Singh Tomar, starring India's best actor Irrfan, had won plaudits internationally, including sold out screenings at the London Film Festival, UTV dragged their feet on the film's release. They kept postponing it until perhaps swayed by the critical, if not commercial, reception accorded to Dhulia's Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster, they decided to take the plunge and release the film. The release was at best a low-key affair. Almost nothing was spent on marketing and publicity and the film went out on a scant 300 screens, an aberration these days where thousands are the norm. Paan Singh Tomar was up against Fox's London Paris New York, an aggressively marketed and positively reviewed film in the relatively safe rom-com genre as opposed to a biopic.

Friday, March 2 dawned and Tomar's all-India collections were a poor Rs. 85 lakh. The pundits sniggered in their told you so manner and snuggled deeper into their smug ivory towers. However, they failed to recognise the power of Tomar's content and the Indian public's desire to engage with it, faced, as they are every Friday with a tsunami of detritus in the name of cinema. The reviewers struck the first blow when they near-unanimously lauded the film, not just in India but also in places as far afield as the US where the prestigious New York Timesraved about the film in general and Irrfan in particular. Describing his performance, critic Rachel Saltz said: "Without romanticizing Paan Singh, he shows his basic honesty and gives him real depth. As an actor Mr. Khan rarely does the expected. You can't take your eyes off him." Bit of a crush coming through there, but that's to be expected.

The real turnaround for the film began through word of mouth and the all-pervasive social media. People, ordinary people, mango people if you will, went online in droves and posted love messages about the film. Celebrated actor Amitabh Bachchan was unstinting in his praise, but it was director Anurag Kashyap who went to town and pushed the film hard and tweeted endlessly about it. One sample: "PST is people's outrage with the government apathy. PST embodies the same sentiment that brought people on the streets a year ago with Anna." Except, in this instance, people took to the cinemas and bought tickets and immediately after the film, spread the love by urging others to watch it post haste. The resulting box office collections were nothing short of miraculous. From a low of Rs. 85 lakh on Friday, collections jumped to Rs. 1.7 crore on Saturday and a stupendous Rs. 2 crore on Sunday, making an opening weekend net total of more than Rs. 4.5 crore. Poor Anu Menon. Her London Paris New York is decent enough, but got sidelined by the Paan Singh Tomar wave, just making it past the Rs. 4-crore mark.

The victory of Tomar shows that every once in a while, content will be king, but before you start celebrating, also reflect on the fact that Housefull 2 and the next Salman Khanabomination will also be huge hits, thus reflecting our diversity of taste, however poor it is.

Originally posted by: you2

Watched the artiste yesterday...Paan Singh Tomar this weekend..and hopefully kahaani is upto expectations..thats next week..

watched Agent vinod trailer..I might catch that too..

btw...I LOVE IRRFAN❤️

Me too 😳

Originally posted by: LifeOLicious

^What I like best about it is the way the whole film industry is promoting the film. I really hope they do this for all good films with no stars and no big production house backing it (PST I think is a UTV production). Will this make Irfan Khan a star?

Hoping to see Irfan Khan somewhere in the nomination lists next year. The real Khan is here :P

Biopics, intentionally or otherwise, tend to glorify or idolise the characters they are based on. Tigmanshu Dhulia's painstakingly researched film comes with that baggage.

Having watched an early cut during its world premiere in 2010 and coming out largely unimpressed, I almost gave this one a miss. Until I heard the film had been re-cut (Aarti Bajaj) and the score changed. I was still not sure how much it had changed because the version I watched back then was largely forgettable with a terribly manipulative background score that made you cringe. I am glad I did re-watch it because it seemed a lot more convincing this time around.

I was able to find what I missed back then. The heart of a man who believes he has been wronged by the State and strikes back. The angst of a man who hates the system for ignoring his prize-winning efforts for the country but now celebrated for his notoriety. The fate he had brought upon himself purely as a form of protest.

Biopics ride on the actors portraying the main character, and Irrfan Khan as Paan Singh Tomar makes up for what he lacks in muscle and shape required of an athlete, with rustic charm and sincerity. However, he does shine as the ageing runner and the man pushed against the wall.

Initially, we understand his rage against the system and his decision to steal from the rich and protect the poor. Like the journalist interviewing him (Brijendra Kala), we are happy to hear the story from the feared man himself, his reasoning and point of view… But only till he admits to gunning down nine unarmed villagers and insists they deserved to die.

This is the point where we stop relating to him but the director continues to tell us the story from Tomar's perspective. He continues to glorify the man who is becoming more and more trigger-happy and makes him out to be a hero who is just completing the race, the rebel who refuses to surrender to the system.

The lines sparkle with wit and wry humour and the ensemble (Zakir Hussain, Rajendra Gupta, Vipin Sharma, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Mahie Gill) chips in with fantastic support. Tigmanshu mounts his canvas on a large scale and presents this rarely seen milieu in all its glory. Incidentally, he was the casting director of Bandit Queen, and has been planning this film ever since he heard of Paan Singh Tomar. So it's no surprise that the landscape comes alive with the heat and dust of the ravines, the atmospherics adding to the tension of the man on the run, constantly suspecting his own mates of trying to poison him.

It's a gritty and difficult film to make given its moral ambivalence, and full points to the makers for even attempting to tell this story about a man who couldn't do anything else but run. And be on the run.

Paan Singh Tomar

Genre: Biopic

Director: Tigmanshu Dhulia

Cast: Irrfan Khan, Mahie Gill, Zakir Hussain, Brijendra Kala

Storyline: The true story of a gold-medal-winning athlete from the army who became a dreaded dacoit in Chambal

Bottomline: Riveting tribute to an unsung hero who lost his way