Directed
by: Sudha Kongara Prasad
Produced
by: R. Madhavan and
Rajkumar Hirani
Written
by: Sudha Kongara Prasad
Starring:
R. Madhavan and Ritika
Singh
Music
by: Santhosh Narayanan
Cinematography:
Sivakumar Vijayan
Edited
by: Sathish Suriya
Production
company: Y NOT Studios, UTV
Motion Pictures,
Rajkumar Hirani Films and Tricolour Films
Release
dates: 29 January 2016
Story
line:
Adi Tomar had a dream
to win the boxing gold for India. Instead he languished in a nightmare for a
decade as his gloves were spiked during an all-important match, blinding him in
the arena and handing the match to his undeserving opponent-a mediocre boxer
but a political powerhouse. The culprit was his own coach, Dev Khatri.
Shattered by his loss, and disillusioned by the state of Indian boxing, Adi
turned to a life of cynical self-destruction of booze, brothels and bar-fights.
Loyal friends somehow bring him back to boxing as the coach of the lowly rated
Indian women's boxing team. His outspoken honesty sends jitters through his old
adversaries, and he is soon transferred to Chennai-the Siberia of Indian
boxing. But Adi continues to dream but this time for a free-spirited, fiery
young woman from the fishing community, Madhi. Adi spots in her a champion that
could bring India the gold that he was robbed off. But first Adi must earn her
trust, then tame her impetuosity and finally make her dream... all this in just
nine months before the world championship. And so begins an uneasy partnership
between a man who loves his sport and a girl who loves her freedom. Rigor and
rebellion, structure and free spirit collide. It is the beginning of a
beautiful friendship and a journey towards an impossible dream.
Know
more about the captain of the Ship, the director:
Sudha
Kongara Prasad is an Indian film
director and screenwriter known for her works in Tamil cinema, Telugu cinema,
and Bollywood. She debuted as a screen
writer for the Indian English film Mitr, My Friend, which won the Best English
Film of the year award at the 49th National Film Awards. She then worked as
associate director for various works, including Mani Ratnam's films such as Guru.
During the production of her first directorial
venture Drohi (2010), Sudha Kongara Prasad began writing a sports drama film on
boxing. In mid-2013, she approached Madhavan, who was on a sabbatical from
Tamil films, to portray the lead role in the film and his presence in the
project, helped take the financial viability of the venture to a higher level. The
pair had previously collaborated in Madhavan's films under the direction of
Mani Ratnam, where Sudha had been an associate director
My
Gut Feel and comments:
Promo of Saala khadoos reminds films like Mary
Kom, iqbal and chakde India which revolve around a journey of dreamers who made
big after a struggle. One more common element seems captured beautifully is a
love hate relationship of a coach and a player where coach pushes hard to bring
out best in a player which lead to success of a player eventually.
In case of this movie title
Saala khadoos belongs to to
R. Madhavan who is aggressive, short tempered and strict coach.
Sudha Kongara Prasad the director of this movie first narrated this script to
Madhavan in 2011 and as Madhavan liked the script he took the responsibility of
finding the producer for the movie. It took a while however he did manage to
find the producers for producing both tamil and hindi version.
Shooting for both the
versions happened simultaneously with same star cast R. Madhavan and Ritika
Singh in lead roles. Ritika Singh is a boxer by profession in real life too and
not a trained actor. Both sudha and Madhavan were convinced from day one that
they want a real life sports person for this film which was indeed a risk
however seems paid off well.
Saala khadoos seems honest sincere effort from
creative team and should register an entry in good sensible sports based films which we have seen in recent past.
Going by my gut
feeling I am giving this movie 3 stars out of 5, one days before the release.