‘Bhaag Milkha Bhaag Review- Tanmay Dubey

 

Starring :- Farhan Akhtar, Sonam Kapoor, Pawan Malhotra, Divya Dutta

Director:- Rakesh Omprakah Mehra

 

Once upon a time there was a Sikh, who did not used to run but fly. He was ‘The Flying Sikh’. He made his country proud, not only once but in number of occasions like Olympics, Asian games, Common Wealth Games and was a proud national record holder. But his share of success does not came just like that, he had his share of failures too, his battles with demons of past life, his hard work, dedication and his tapasya  to reach his aim.

            Rakesh Omprakash Mehra and Farhan Akhtar do a brilliant and near flawless job of  recreating the biopic of Milkha Singh. The challenge while making such a film is that the director do not have the leverage of creating larger than life problems and then using cinematic freedom to make the hero come out of that. The story teller has to be within boundaries of the real life incidents and a lot depends on the performance, screenplay, cinematography, ROM gets full marks for successfully connecting different bogies in this train.

         The story in the film flows like a quite river tracing the present life of now world famous Milkha singh who refuses to go to Pakistan as he fears that his feet would freeze facing the ghosts of his past when during the partition his entire family was massacred. In between, as the river flows it has some ‘rapids’ too where the flashes from his past life is shown. Some would object to the length of the film but guess every scene be it, during his childhood, drinking ghee while doing pushups , song and dance in Australia, his wins in different runs across the world was needed to sketch the depth of the character of Milkha Singh, the kind of person he was, who would take any challenge.

      The cinematography is brilliant too, the slow-motion scenes during his runs, camera hovering on small details like the blood stained patti flowing during run,  camera focusing on barbed wire when the Indian contingent enters Pakistan, Scene involving Farhan’s transformation transpires great cinematic thematic.

      Lastly an amazing and out of the skin performance by Farhan Akhtar getting into the character; The guy deserves standing ovation. Its very good to see Bollywood relying more and more on telling the real life stories than formula ridden masala pot boilers. The song ‘launda’ is too good and one falls for the cuteness of Farhan. The support cast of Divya Dutta, Pawan Malhotra is very good. Baddie prakashraaj has a good role. ‘Papa’ Yograaj singh makes his debut in mainstream hindi cinema and is impressive. The lady love played by Sonam kapoor does not have much to do.

Loved the part where the director Rakesh Omprakash Mehra turns up as a pilot and says I am the pilot who is driving the plane J ! (so very true!) Songs like Koyla Kaala and Bhaag Milkha are great too.  

All in all this is a great weekend dose of adrenaline! Enjoy the run J !

 

Score Stack Up:-

+ ive:-  Good Screenplay and tremendous performances

-  ive:-  Little slow


Tanmay's Rating : 4 out of 5

 

 

Scores Classifications- 

(5)  Very Good, Must Watch 

(4)   Good, Should Watch 

(3)   Not Bad;

(2)  One Time Watch; 

(1)  On your own risk;