Soorma: A gentle and inspiring biopic

A biopic on a hockey player, who is neither Dhyan Chand, nor Dhanraj Pillay or Sardar Singh, needed a big heart and a bigger conviction. More so, when sporting biopics are just about becoming a genre in the otherwise song and dance drama monopolising Bollywood’s box-office obsessed sagas.

So far, we have had big banners around Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Mary Kom in recent memory. Both did well at the box office. Soorma, the amazing story of a rising hockey player, whose life gets felled for more than a year by a stray bullet on a train, is intrinsically emotional and inspiring.

Director Shaad Ali has kept the proceedings somewhat errantly under-toned for a story which could have been a compulsive tear-jerker. However, the gentle humour, the subtlety in relationships and the quirky situations that life pastes on the journey to growth have been used well to punctuate the story of man who literally defeated death to not just live life kingsize but also return to the international hockey turf which is enough to not look back at lost talent.

Diljit Dosanjh as drag flicker Sandeep Singh was the best possible choice Ali could have made and the actor does well to make the player’s reel presence real. But for the bits and pieces of hesitancy with the hockey stick, Dosanjh does a good job of keeping the film high on emotion and performance, as does Taapsee Pannu as Sandeep’s love interest.

Satish Kaushik as Sandeep’s beleaguered but simple father and Angad Bedi as his elder brother Bikramjit who could not make it to Team India despite being the original hockey player in the family, do justice to their cameos.

All said though, the film could have been much more momentous than it is but it’s an interesting story nevertheless which keeps you mildly appreciative all through the proceedings.

Source: Published in Sunday Pioneer, 15 July, 2018