Azhar (Hindi)
Director: Tony D’Souza
Cast: Emraan Hashmi, Prachi Desai, Nargis Fakhri, Kunaal Roy Kapur
Azhar lacks spine. It is evident in the long disclaimer preceding the film in which the team seems to be making a claim on cricketer Mohammad Azharuddin’s colourful and controversial life as a source material yet maintaining that it is a fictional account. All to escape legal battles.
Azharuddin (Emraan) is a fascinating character to have built a dispassionate film on. A man, who rose meteorically because of his game, the way he let his bat do all the talking.
He fell from favour just as fast because of his covetousness and his alleged involvement in the match fixing scandal.
He is a man of frailties and shortcomings both on the field of cricket and in the arena of love.
But instead of exploring the many shades of grey in him, Tony D’Souza attempts to defend him.
Such is the bias that the other players — Manoj, Ravi, Navjot (only first names, no surnames mind you) — get the wrong end of the stick. Manoj is made to come across as jealous and vengeful. Ravi is nothing but a rake.
As though that wasn’t enough you have Kapil tell Azhar: “Class ke nalayak bachche monitor ko sabse zyada pareshan karte hain (It’s the good-for-nothing kids who trouble the class monitor the most). Poor Azhar!
Such is the eagerness to justify him that D’Souza makes it seem as though the whole bad world is out to get him. Why he took the two crores from bookie M.K. Sharma and what he did with the money is portrayed in such a way as to earn him some desperate brownie points.
Even his walking away from an ostensibly fine marriage into the arms of actress Sangeeta Bijlani (Nargis) is turned into a soppy inevitability.
When it comes to the craft the film looks too outmoded in the way it has been mounted, the loud background score soaring over everything else and dialoguebaazi in the name of conversations.
A friend telling Azhar: Dua kar sakta hoon, namaaz khud padhni hogi (I can pray for you but you will have to read the namaaz yourself).
The lines, some of them utterly inane and vacuous, reminded me of heavy duty dialogues of Once Upon A Time In Mumbai .
In the name of acting you have Hashmi being stiff, staring deep into the camera, looking far from his comfortable self.
Desai and Fakhri weep buckets when they are not being coy. If that wasn’t all there is also Kunal Roy Kapur as Azhar’s lawyer. As yet another stereotype of the South Indian in Bollywood he irritates to the hilt. So does the film.
NAMRATA JOSHI
