Sultan review: Salman Khan takes quite a beating and still stands tall
Salman Khan's Sultan is ultimately a tropes-laden affair, with unnecessary songs and plot contrivances. However, It does have its occasional charm.
Director: Ali Abbas Zafar
Cast: Salman Khan, Anushka Sharma, Anant Sharma, Amit Sadh, Kumud Mishra and Randeep Hooda
Ratings: 
The first of the two wrestling dramas of 2016 has arrived. It stars Salman 'Bhai' Khan as an accomplished wrestler who comes out of retirement and becomes a mixed martial arts specialist. What's driving him is a tragic loss, a broken heart and forgiveness from the love of his life.
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The protracted drama begins with Akshay Oberoi (Amit Sadh, reminiscent of Raj Kundra here) struggling to popularize a MMA tournament, Pro Take-Down. His father, played by Parikshit Sahni, suggests that he ropes in Sultan (Salman Khan), an erstwhile wrestler, to give the league a patriotic spin and financial boost. But before we see Sultan's paunch, his gloomy demeanour and Rocky-like training regimen, audiences are taken back eight years to see how Sultan fell in love with wrestling. Cut to running into a feisty fair maiden-biker who beats him up in the lanes of Haryana. It appears that Sultan is struck hardest at his heart for he is convinced he has found his life partner in Aarfa (Anushka Sharma), daughter of a wrestling coach and owner of an akhada (Kumud Mishra). Only wrestling, and not love, is high on Aarfa's mind; she aims to win a gold medal at the Olympics and make Haryana and the nation proud. Disclaimer: If you want to watch a film about a female wrestler's hardships and rise to the top, perhaps Aamir Khan and UTV's Dangal will meet your expectations. Sultan is all about Salman, 50, giving it his all - physically and emotionally.
To win Aarfa's heart and gain her respect - a few minutes before she has slammed him for being a joker and lacking a purpose in life - Sultan decides to become a wrestler. It takes the thirty-something Sultan three months and a week of training to become a state champion. Because, Sultan Ali Khan aka Bhai can. Having proved himself as a wrestler, Aarfa immediately marries Sultan and in the next 10 minutes we see them having won top prize at the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games. But when it comes to the biggest of them all, London Olympics in 2012, Aarfa is a no-show. Ali Abbas Zafar, who has written the story, screenplay and dialogues, it seems has decided that Dangal can talk about feminism, for there is no consideration given whatsoever to observe how the pivotal turning point affects Aarfa who here has to make the ultimate sacrifice.
But let's not deviate from topic for this film is all about Sultan, who is now an Olympic gold medallist. But with great success there is a fear of greater arrogance. Soon Sultan is far away from his glory days - he is now a lonesome, unhappy, dishevelled and out-of-shape government servant collecting funds from locals. Enter Amit Sadh, who ropes in Randeep Hooda as the disparaging trainer who gets Sultan back in shape. This time Sultan takes a month and a half to beat the MMA practitioners. In Bhai we believe.
Sultan is ultimately a tropes-laden affair, with unnecessary songs and plot contrivances.It does have its occasional charm courtesy a nice supporting turn by Anant Sharma as hero ka friend who provides the laughs and then suddenly in second half becomes Sultan's ringside aid. But what keeps the 170-minute sports drama from being a borefest is but of course Salman Khan.It's easy to see that Zafar has written Sultan keeping Salman in mind. Every time adversity has knocked on Salman's doors, he has found a way around it. Just when you think he is down and out with yet another controversy, he bounces back. Like Salman, Sultan is flamboyant, possesses pride and a devil-may-care attitude, and more so a hunger to succeed. Sultan is another addition to Salman's recent filmography in which he plays a not-so-perfect hero who seeks admiration and respect through his good deeds. In this case, he also seeks atonement for his sins and bad behaviour and takes quite a beating for it. He runs, jumps, tumbles, gets punched, broken, bruised and hurled around, he bleeds, but he keeps going. There is vulnerability on display here and it is not just showing your fully waxed legs in tiny black briefs.