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Originally posted by: guess.wh0
Hoping and praying that this is the biggest disaster in the history of Indian cinema. The biggest scumbag in sports doesn't deserve to be glorified in such ways.
Originally posted by: Maroon5.0
Why what he do ??
Rating: 2/5 Stars (Two stars)
Star Cast: Emraan Hashmi, Nimrat Kaur, Prachi Desai, Gautam Gulati, Kunaal Roy Kapur, Huma Qureshi, Nargis Fakhri, Lara Dutta
Director: Tony D'Souza
Azhar Movie PosterWhat's Good: The makers slap a huge warning towards the beginning, claiming it is not a biopic and that cinematic liberties have been taken on the story. Why good? Had it been a biopic, it would have been one of the most fickle attempts, shaming the cricketing legend too.
What's Bad: A lengthy run-time, corny dialogues and a lackluster act by the lead cast!
Loo Break: Yes! Especially for the never-ending courtroom scenes.
Watch or Not?: Azhar is a film that glorifies Azharuddin as an underdog. For a fan of Cricket or Azhar, it comes as a huge disappointment due to mediocrity of the content. You could give this one a miss!
User Rating:
Born into a Hyderabadi family, a young Mohammad Azharuddin is convinced by his Naanajaan (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) that he will become a great cricketer some day and play 100 test matches for team India.
Soon, Azhar turns out to be a brilliant batsman and India's high run-scorer thanks to his talent and a young captain too.
Once his professional life is on track, Azhar's family decides, it's time for the lad to get hitched. He meets Naureen (Prachi Desai) in an arrange marriage set up. The two soon tie the knot and his cricketing career keeps soaring.
The fame starts to play with his head and he gets dazzled by the riches. On a tour to London, he meets the Hindi cinema's famed beauty Sangeeta (Nargis Fakhri). Initially being well cautious about his marital status, Azhar unintentionally falls for Sangeeta. The duo fall in love and he soon announces it to the world by dedicating her his Man of the match award.
Then starts the discourse of his fall as he meets a bookie named M K Sharma (Rajesh Sharma) and is pulled into a match fixing. Further, an 8 year battle at the court challenging the decision over life ban on cricket is what we see.
Emraan Hashmi in a still from movie Azhar'Azhar could easily be said to be one of the weakest films when it comes to portraying a real-life character on-screen. The writers have a great subject at hand and there is so much to explore but what they stick to is an overly commercial approach.
Filled with extremely corny dialogues that make little efforts to convey anything sensible, there is less to look out for in this script. It also seems more like, pieces from Azhar's life have been simply weaved together in a montage to make us sympathize with him and his situation back then.
The courtroom scenes are written poorly with snooty dialogues assigned to Lara Dutta's character that make the entire sequence highly fictitious. Side characters are gravely under-developed as opposed to their importance in Azhar's real life.
With an explosive content at hand, the film fails to cash in on it to make it a juicier or a realistic affair.
It is a shame that in a country like India where Cricket is religion, a film like Azhar leaves you with nothing for its former captain.
Emraan Hashmi plays the lead protagonist Azhar. While it was said that the actor spent a lot of time with Azhar to get into his character, it hardly shows in the film. Lopsided shouldered walk does not make up for his weak act in the film. We see too much Emraan in the film than Azhar thanks to his typical dialogue delivery.
Prachi Desai's demure act of Naureen, the wife he wronged is quite decent. She does not have much screen-time but manages to do exactly what she is expected to in the film.
Nargis Fakhri is another weak link in the film. Her acting deficiency is known to us and it continues with this film. Other than batting her eyelids, pouting and dramatic soft sobs, she hardly has anything to do.
Lara Dutta as the oversmart and snooty lawyer Meera hams in the film. Also there is something terribly wrong with her look in the film.
Kunal Roy Kapur does a decent job as Reddy, Azhar's lawyer. He overdoes his accent a little but overall a good change for him.
TV actors Gautam Gulati, Varun Badola and Fukrey fame Manjot Singh are cast as supporting characters in the film. Their characters are under written and hence fail to create any impact.
Tony D'Souza may have inserted a big slide at the start of the film claiming that the film is not a biopic but that surely does not give him any leeway from giving us such a fickle film.
Dealing with a sport like Cricket and not executing some class apart on-field scenes is a crime I would say. The camera-angles in most shots from the re-created India-Pakistan and the Jubilee cup are highly messed. What's a cricket scene without the crowd-cheering giving you goosebumps?
Invoked with zero feelings of even Azharuddin's love for the game, this glitzy affair has songs that are great to listen to, but misfits for story-telling.
Over-stretched court-room scenes, make you also feel like it was a 8 year ordeal after the judgement is passed.
One keeps waiting for the film to end but there is just so much hotch potch added in the second half that the run-time keeps increasing.
Azhar is a complete misfiled. It neither captures the spirit of the game nor the personality. A 2/5 for the film!
I'm convinced that most if not all mainstream biopics tend to be hagiographies, at least to some extent. After all, if a major production house is willing to finance a movie with many crores at stake, it's natural that they would want to avoid having to fight off several lawsuits.
This is true of films like Rahasya (2015) and Talvar (2015), which both told the story of the Aarushi murder case by changing the names of the people involved ever so slightly, or this week's release, Azhar, a look at the life of former cricket captain Mohammad Azharuddin, who has lent his support to the film.
In such cases, where it's impossible to be truly objective for the sake of practicality, the least a film can do is try and tell its character's story as honestly as possible, and leave some room for the audience to draw its own conclusions. However, Azhar, directed by Tony D'Souza (Blue, Boss), has no such ambitions. Starring Emraan Hashmi in the lead role, it is quite content with being a Jannat-esque entertainer.
That it constantly attempts to lionise Azharuddin " who was famously banned from the game on charges of match-fixing in 2000, and exonerated just four years ago by the Andhra Pradesh High Court for lack of evidence " is only one of its sins. Details about the cricketer's life that are public knowledge " his meetings with the bookie known as MK (called MK Sharma here and played by Rajesh Sharma), his extramarital affair with the actress Sangeeta (Nargis Fakhri, playing a fictionalised version of former actress Sangeeta Bijlani) " are duly touched upon, but in a way that constantly suggests the reel Azhar is a hero we must root for, rather than a flawed individual.
Hashmi, as the gifted cricketer, puts a lot of effort into his performance, which shows. His imitations of Azharuddin's mannerisms " the distinctive batting stance, his tendency to tilt his head sideways, that signature flick of the wrists' " are all fairly impressive. But his performance as a whole is disastrously uneven. One moment he's succeeding in emulating Azhar's abrupt style of speaking; the next, he's sounding like himself. This film, perhaps more than any other, exposes his biggest flaw as an actor: at best, he is competent but rarely interesting or surprising (a notable exception being his career-best turn in Dibakar Banerjee's 2012 drama Shanghai).
As seems to be par for the course in Bollywood nowadays, the background music is a clichd, over-the-top approximation of every Hans Zimmer action movie score ever. This combination is particularly indigestible in some of the courtroom scenes, where Azhar's lawyer friend Reddy (Kunal Roy Kapur, annoyingly hammy), a nervous Nellie type, attempts to bring comic relief to tense situations; meanwhile, the music suggests that Batman is about to BASE jump off a skyscraper.
Then, of course, there's the usual melodrama that you'd expect from such a film. Most of it falls flat, though, since the script doesn't bother to flesh out any character that isn't its protagonist.
It doesn't help that the production design is fairly lazy and tacky. The film jumps eras and locations very frequently, with exterior locations in London and Hyderabad looking like the present even when we're told it's the 90s. The make-up is too visible. Kapur's receding hairline is very clearly a wig. Every fake moustache in this film seems to be gunning for next year's Dadasaheb Phalke' Award for Best Fake Moustache. Lara Dutta plays a well-heeled, irritable prosecuting lawyer from London whose brief seems to have been: "You're a single mother and everyone around you is a five-year-old on a sugar high".
Then, of course, there's the usual melodrama that you'd expect from such a film. Most of it falls flat, though, since the script doesn't bother to flesh out any character that isn't its protagonist. The plight experienced by both Azhar's wife Naureen (Prachi Desai) and Sangeeta barely registers. All the glycerine in the world can't make up for the fact that the film treats them as plot points, not actual characters. Then again, while Desai at least makes a valiant attempt to perform (although strictly in TV serial bahu mode), Fakhri looks like she's finding it hard to take any of this seriously; as a result, it's impossible to take her seriously.
The only fleeting pleasures to be found in Azhar are when it takes us to a cricket ground. Despite obviously visible green-screen work, many of them are staged quite satisfactorily and add some joy to the proceedings. Aside from that, it is amusing to see Manjot Singh and Gautam Gulati play fictionalised versions of Navjot Singh Sidhu and Ravi Shastri, even though one can't call them very good performances.
What a pity, though. Azhar could honestly have been a great biopic, even within its own self-imposed limitations. Instead, like Azharuddin, it chooses to ignore its own potential and thereby shoots itself in the foot.
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In one of the interviews before the film released, former Indian skipper Mohammad Azharuddin was asked if this movie is a PR exercise to cleanse his image and erase the blemishes of his past. With his distinct swag, Azhar had tersely said 'No'. Now when we watch the film, there is so little of the real Azhar in it. He is reduced to a caricature, his story is half-baked, lacking any authenticity. What director Tony D'Souza has to offer is available in public records and for his fans, information etched in their memories. Why would anyone want to pay the price of a ticket to watch Emraan Hashmi struggle with the colourful life and being of Azharuddin, when his cockiness can easily be made available on prime time! The disclaimer that screeches about the story being partly fictional makes no sense. Are we to believe that Azhar has consented for his story to be sensationalized? Or that Tony has his own share of doubts about the factual correctness of data given by Azhar? In any case, the film is hardly worth that kind of pondering or debate. Contrary to the man it pays tribute to, the film lacks his spirit, vigour and valour.
The glitter and the shimmer of Bollywood's song-and-dance routine wear the plot thin. There are ample lip locks and needless sleaze sandwiched between sparse heart-wrenching moments. In places, it came off as a vanity project for Emraan, whose last few films haven't fared well at the box office. The actor does his best to sink his teeth into the layered titular character but the writing is weak. The writers played safe, showing everyone as goody-two shoes...even Azhar. The home wreckers are dolls of righteousness. Are we saying that the characters of this film are flat and henceforth, dull? Yes, that would be the correct way to put it.
When the film was announced, the audience was excited to find out more about the cricketing scandal that brought down the numero uno of the cricketing world. In India, cricket is a religion and back then, Azhar had become a traitor. His success as a captain and a batsman who performed phenomenally well for 99 tests changed overnight after match-fixing charges were slapped on him. Does the film dig deeper into what happens? No. Or at least it shows Azhar's side of the story, the version of a fallen hero? No. Much like in any Bollywood potboiler, Azhar is a lover-boy, a philandering man whose glorious career falls like a house of cards overnight. Tony never makes you feel the pinch of it or the pain he undergoes. The blame in this case, lies entirely with the director. Emraan, even with his fake moustache, manages to bring on screen the demeanor and swagger of Azhar. He manages to get the right touch of irreverence to the character.
The problem here is that you can't make something like a biopic. It is either a biopic or not. What Omung Kumar did to Mary Kom, Tony does to Azhar. Mary Kom shone at awards season solely because of Priyanka Chopra's powerful portrayal of the boxing champion. But the story was superficial. Even in this case, the plot never shows the real side of Azhar and Emraan in unable to rise above the material at hand and pack a punch.
The director doesn't tackle the story well. Losing himself between the tumultuous personal saga and the long drawn court battle, he fails to keep the drama uniform. The fact that there are jaded, clunky, overdramatic dialogues spoils the case even further. Somewhere between Lara Dutta and Kunaal Roy Kapur's ridiculous arguments and counter arguments, you lose interest. After all, aren't we all well aware that Azhar was far too dynamic a man to settle for being an underdog!
Azhar's wives played by Nargis Fakhri and Prachi Desai were both reduced to sniffling people. Naureen has been kept safely guarded from the public eye but anyone who even remotely knew Sangeeta, can see the disparities between her and the screen character. Nargis does her best to make Sangeeta feisty but is pulled down by the frail plot. Even the sidekicks played by Gautam Gulati and Manjot Singh who are otherwise able actors weren't justified. They worship, resent, ridicule Azhar but to no effect on us.
This is one of those films you can watch because your wife wants a tub of popcorn and you want an outing to shush a domestic crisis. But for Azhar's lovers or even film buffs, the film is an opportunity lost. It is watchable, despite the corny, over-the-top dialogues, but never becomes a fitting tribute to a fallen hero. At no point will you feel Azhar's hurt or frustration. Yes, the one thing it will surely make you do is rewatch his old matches. In there lies a better story than the one Emraan plays out on screen.
We rate Azhar a 40% on the Pinkvilla Movie Meter.
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