Film: Toofaan
Rating: 2.25/5
Cast: Farhan Akhtar, Paresh Rawal and Mrunal Thakur
Written By: Anjum Rajabali
Music: Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy
Cinematography: Jay Oza
Producers: Ritesh Sidhwani, Farhan Akhtar, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra
Direction: Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra
OTT: Amazon Prime Video
Release date: 16 July 2021
Rakesh Omprakash Mehra is the one who made the head turners like Rang De Basanthi and Bhaag Mika Bhaag that kept the film industry in attention. But many times he made the thumbs down films as well. He came up with 'Toofaan' this time and hit home entertainment through Amazon Primevideo.
Toofaan is the story of a street fighter (Farhan Akhtar) turned National Boxing Champion. His love interest Ananya (Mrunal Sharma) is a doctor and her father Nana Prabhu (Paresh Rawal) is the boxing coach who is an ardent Hindu and anti-Muslim in thought process for personal reasons. Well, the boxer protagonist is Aziz, a Muslim.
With this kind of pitch, everybody can predict how the narration goes about. So the real talent of the story teller lies in proving the audience's prediction wrong and also dwells in engaging them with more gripping narration till the end. But that didn't happen here.
Everything goes as predicted. The film sounds either cliched or does not hold enough punch because the audience have already watched Dangal and kept that as a benchmark for this kind of films, unknowingly. So any film narrative that resembles the graph of that film or inferior to it cannot hold interest.
Farhan Akhtar struggled a lot to build his body to play this tough boxer's role. As per the narrative, he also appeared fat with a big belly recalling Aamir Khan's feat in Dangal. Though Farhan's hard work is seen, he cannot get the awe dropping salutes from the audiences as he just repeated what Aamir Khan did a few years ago.
Mrunal is good, photogenic and impressive. Her role is short though crucial. The emotional hooks are not dealt well and the audience tend to fast forward some romantic episodes to switch over to the main story of boxing.
The film takes many diversions towards the end that tests patience. The reference to Lovejihaad and some aspects of terrorism linked to a reliogion might have raked up some controversy but it was dealt with balance.
On a whole, Toofaan is a reasonably well made movie but cannot withstand the impact the other earlier sports films made on the audience.
Bottom Line: Falls down on knees in the ring