In a country where cricket is no less than a religion itself, it can be quite tricky to make a movie on one of its god. Especially, if the story is about contradictions.
Produced by the silver screen Kapoor clan, Shobha and Ekta Kapoor under the banner of Sony Pictures, the movie Directed by Tony D’Souza is a relentlessly half baked cake. The script for the movie is written by Rajat Aroraa, which although looks like a good effort but hasn’t been handled well.
While it looks like making a movie on the life of India’s legendary cricket captain, Mohd. Azharuddin was a great idea, the same cannot be said about casting Emraan Hashmi as the legend himself. It is disappointing to see a sportsman so stylish, charismatic and athletic, to be represented by someone who could not even half come up to his personality. Despite the fact that Azharuddin was accused of betting, you cannot but take away the charm he had, just to show his downhill days.
In fact, what is even more disturbing is how poorly the casting has been done. Nargis Fakhri fails to act, let alone act as Sangeeta Bijlani. The star cast for entire cricket team is a big showdown. Even for non cricket fans, it’s hard to digest, Varun Badola as Kapil Dev or Gautam Gulati as Ravi Shastri or for that matter the six footer Navjot Singh Siddhu, being played by tiny Manjot Singh. It all seems absurd.
I literally had to force myself to concentrate only on the story because most things, to me, looked so much out of sync. It was quite apparent that the supporting actors seemed like trying hard to fit into the role or to be able to deliver that image.
The only person worth mentioning for a good job done is Prachi Desai ( not considering that we do not know what actually his first wife looked like). Kunal Roy Kapoor has acted very well as Azhar’s lawyer, Reddy, but over all the dialogues of the movie are very weak.
From my end. I can give you 3 reasons to must watch Azhar movie
It will your opinion about Azharuddin- no matter if you are a cricket fan or not, at least you will introspect if he actually was at fault or not.
It will change your opinion about Emraan Hashmi- he cannot act anything other than romantic scenes involving lip-locks.
It will change your opinion about cricket in India- to give you food for thought about making it no less than a religion!
Globalfashionstreet rates it at 2 stars out of five.
