Chak De India has no romance and no villain: SRK

More than 2,000 movie buffs attended the world premiere of Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Chak de India, a film on women's hockey in India, at the famous Somerset House. Describing it as a new experience, Khan told the packed gathering at the open air theatre ....

that it was a different kind of movie, "a little irregular film".

"It has a noble thought. It is important to talk about team spirit, women and their role in the world," he told the cheering crowd.

The premiere was part of the film4 Summer Screen at Somerset House and one of the glittering highlights of 'India Now', a three-month season celebrating London's growing relationship with India and exploration of India's culture and contribution to London life.

Produced by Aditya Chopra and directed by Shimit Amin, Chak de India is the comeback story of an ageing hockey player (Khan). The two-and-a-half-hour-long film, which kept the audience spell bound, has Khan starring as a coach, fighting his personal demons as he takes a motley group of girls to the pinnacle of the world hockey.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who was present on the podium with Khan, said "we have many wonderful events taking place across London throughout the three months duration of 'India Now' and the world premiere of Chak de India is undoubtedly one of the biggest and most exciting.

"It is a great honour for London to host this launch event for a film, which, like so many Bollywood blockbusters, touches the hearts and minds of millions across the world."

Asked whether he has any advice to Indian coaches, be it hockey or any other game, on how to win, Khan said "I am only an actor. What advice I can give. It is the job of the coaches to prepare the teams and win matches."

About Chak de India, he said "this is a film about sports. There had been films on sports like Lagaan and others. I always wanted to do a film on sports, particularly on field and women hockey, much neglected in cinema."

"I play the coach. I have 16 girls around me playing hockey. It has no songs but only sporting capabilities. The film has no romance and no villain."

Earlier in the day, the actor joined Sunil Gavaskar in the commentator box at The Oval during India's third and final Test against England, where he said "I occasionally watch Rahul and Sachin and I have grown up watching Sunny Saab."

Khan was buoyant when asked about his sporting lineage. "My father used to play hockey. I too enjoyed playing hockey. I used to carry my hockey stick on my back when I went to school. I used to try and play all sports. I kept running behind the ball all the time but never used to catch it."

He said Chak de India is not country-specific. "It can be Chak de London, Chak de Pakistan or Chak de Bangladesh."

Khan said the audience in UK has always been very kind to him. "I am humbled by the reception I get here."

"Winning or losing is not all that important. What is important is participation in sports. This film teaches sportsmen and women to be positive and aggressive," he said.

Replying to a question, Khan said he spent a month in Australia playing with National Level women hockey players.

Source: KhaleejTimes

"Chak De India" is an outright winner. A triumph of the spirit, and of craftsmanship!

While director Shimit Amin of "Ab Tak Chhappan" fame has crafted a film with immense staying power and exceptional integrity and gusto, the thought-process behind the endearing endeavour harks back to a series of well-crafted Hollywood films about team spirit, the low-spirited team and the burnt-out disgraced and exiled coach who motivates the team and galvanises his own dormant spirit into a wide-alert status.

Dig in. It's all there. And yet writer Jaideep Sahni takes the expected tale to heights of great expectations with an endearing tone of expression.

Amin turns the triumph-of-spirit formula inside out.

While narrating a fairly predictable story of a down-and-out all-girls' hockey team's journey into global triumph, the director brings into play a kind of abiding charisma that's born out of a sincere passion for a neglected sport and that even more neglected spirit of collective aspirations.

A certain formulism runs through all films about seeming losers who triumph on the field against all cynicism. But beyond that elementary reading there ticks a substantial heart of gold in this tale of molten motivations.

The question of the Indian Muslim's identity in the face of an often-suspicious majority surfaces early in the clenched narration, as Kabir Khan (Shah Rukh) is accused of selling-out a crucial game of hockey to Pakistan.

Amin and his writer don't let you down. Every grim layer of 'message' is toned down and polished up to highlight and accentuate the cinematic quality without losing out on sheer relevance of the moment and its after-shocks.

The ragged bunch of girls from all over the country gather under one umbrella to give the cynics a run for their money. You watch them with a distant curiosity, which soon evolves into a keen interest in their progress report.

The game never looks contrived. And the greenroom chat is filled with punctuations of immense mirth. Happily, the film never lapses into a verbose rendering of the awakening conscience.

By the time the director and his grim protagonist get a grip over the girls' athletic abilities and their blind spots we are completely hooked, watching not the socio-political issues but a film that pushes the envelope by taking the formula film on a jaunty journey across a craggy hockey field.

The dialogues are quite often the stuff bumper stickers are made of. "There's room for only one goonda in this team, and that's me," the snarling coach tells team bully Bindiya Naik, played with instinctive strength by Shilpa Shukla.

The drama emanates in a rush of warm feelings from the interactive tensions between pairs from the team, for instance the vain Chandigarh player Preeti Sabarwal (Sagarika Ghatge) and the diminutive 'mirchi' from Haryana Komal Chautala (Chitrashi Rawat) or for that matter the flavourful frisson between the ostracised Kabir and the hockey federation which collectively sneers at his aspirations for the all-girls' hockey team.

Of course, you know it's all going to come together in a magnificent whoosh of athletic splendour at the end.

Still, you are completely hooked, enraptured and in total empathy with the girls as they head for Melbourne to bring back the gold medal for a neglected game. By the time the girls get into bordered white saris you are smiling protectively at these children from the third world.

Idealistic and dreamy? You bet! Isn't that what cinema was always meant to be?

"Chak De India" takes us back to the joyous days of watching movies where the heroes began by being unfairly cut down to size and then progressed to being warriors of the dark night fighting their way out of the negativity that surrounds their dreams.

Several sequences stand out for their glorious grip over the grammar of cinema. The sequence at McDonald's, where the hockey team beats up a gang of eve teasers, is so deliciously fulfilling you want to applaud the writer and director for manoeuvring the gender war into an urbane recreational zone without trivialising the larger issues involved.

In terms of the tight but unobtrusive technique applied to Amin's narration "Chak De India" qualifies as one of the finest sports-based dramas in living memory, on par with the poignant sportsmanship of "Chariots Of Fire", if only there was theme music to match the other film.

The editing is never cruel to the sportive spirit. We get to watch the girls playing hockey for as long as required without being subjected to redundant visual hammering.

Finally though, the film is a triumph for Shah Rukh Khan. Stripped of the lover-boy image, unadorned by the romantic props that have given his super starry image that supple longevity and power, Shah Rukh stares straight into his character Kabir's conscience and isn't afraid to mirror some uncomfortable home truths about how we treat our minorities, be it the Muslim Indian, the publicly active woman - watch the arrogant cricket player smirk at his hockey-playing fiancée's dreams - or just the female gender trying to be on a par with the opposite sex.

The girls on the team remain with you after their on-field victory because there's a far larger victory navigating their karma to a final hurrah.

Beyond the tale of the triumph of the spirit, there lies the triumph of the spirit of cinema.

After a point it doesn't matter whether the girls are playing hockey.

It's not the sport. It's the spirit that shines through in every glistening frame of this tale that needed to be told before hockey became as obsolete as films about people who play to redeem their souls.

Rating: 4/5

By: Subash K Jha Source: Khabrein.info

Cheers for Chak De! India

Milk shake, rattle and roll. Sporty girls are bashing up a bunch of eve-teasers in a fast-food restaurant. The hockey coach doesn’t intervene, whips on his dark glasses and smiles lightly. His girls have scored a hit.

Cheers for Chak De! India, which may be predictable but compels you to root for a team of losers whom only an earth-angel can save from disastrous defeat. Written by Jaideep Saini and directed by Shimit Amin, this inspirational effort echoes Hollywood’s Hardball, The Replacements, and Escape to Victory whose influence has already been evidenced in Lagaan.

But what the hell? If a story is retold with varying riffs, a sliver of imagination and sufficient skill, just chill.

Over to Kabir Khan (Shah Rukh Khan), the disgraced captain of the Indian hockey team, who’s out to redeem himself after seven years of vanvas. He lands the assignment, just by a whisker, of coaching the raggedy Indian women’s hockey team. So far, so hopeful.

The 16 girls from various states are a mess – either too raw or too cocksure. Begins the training which does get far too protracted, what with the girls snarling, whining and ready to tear one’s eyes out. Slowly but surely, Khan makes them understand their strengths and above all, their Indianness which alone can get them to the winning goal.

The sequences showing Kabir Khan(Shah Rukh) losing his cool, his request to two competitive players to see the larger picture and the finale’s clarion call, are marvellously done, often making your eyes moist.Obstinately perhaps, the focus remains on Kabir as the coach. There’s no backstory, no glimpses into his heart and mind. Only his mother pops up at the outset and at the end, full stop. In addition, the introduction of the girls – through hideously antiquated wipes – doesn’t make you connect to them, except with the ones who’re either too nice or too much spice. And pray, why linger unduly over the kabhi-bedroom-kabhi-ignore routine of one of the girls with a creepy cricketer?

Chalo Australia, then. Now, you’re hooked as the team takes on the Goliaths, thanks to the coach’s psychological jugglery. The sequences showing Kabir Khan losing his cool, his request to two competitive players to see the larger picture and the finale’s clarion call, are marvellously done, often making your eyes moist. And then, you’re at the edge of the seat for the decisive showdown intricately crafted by sports action director Rob Miller.

Auspiciously, the director fits in strong comments on national unity, gender equality, secularism and team spirit.

Shah Rukh Khan is outstanding – it’s a performance that is comparable and at points even more internalised than the one in Swades. He carries the proverbial burden of the project on his shoulders. Intense and steel-like, he stays in character throughout, shunning any traces of glamour.

Of the girls, the little stick of dynamite Chitrashi Rawat, the independent-minded Sagarika Ghatge, the team’s zip-unzip vamp Shilpa Shukla and the anger-spewing Tania Abrol are marvellous discoveries.

Yup, so go for it!

Rating: ***1/2

Chak De India is the most authentic, meticulously researched sports movie India has made

Yay, yay. Hear it for hockey, for sports movies, and yes, SRK. Chak De, India is by far the most authentic, meticulously researched sports movie India has made. Sure, there are some populist cracks against cricket and cocky cricketers which will gladden the hearts of those who don’t worship at the game’s altar, and yes, there do exist such creatures in India, unbelievable thought it may sound. But ‘Chak De’ is a movie which goes about its purpose seriously : to show how a beloved sport, having fallen into the clutches of opportunists and bagmen, and petty, greedy, self-serving Dilli babus, can be rescued, with vision and determination.

It’s not all rousing action and winning streaks, though. The first half, especially, is predictable, and a little stodgy, in the way it brings state champions into Delhi’s national stadium, and has coach Kabir Khan holler at them: I don’t want to hear the names of states, I only want to hear the name of my mulk, India. Welcome excitement creeps in, post interval, as the rag-tag team, gets whipped into shape, and goes on to win the world cup.

What makes Shimit Amin’s film, his second after the gritty Ab Tak Chappan, stand out from the Yashraj clutter this year, is its ability to keep the tracks undiluted. None of the girls breaks into song and dance, and no one is allowed to show skin. Yes, really. Even when one of them comes onto the coach, in her desire to be made captain, we only hear the sound of the zip. Khan zips the jacket right back up, and with that, seals her desire to be part of Team India.

So does Shah Rukh cut it as a hockey player cum coach? This is SRK in realistic mode again, after Swades. When Coach Khan and his girls are out on the field, whacking everything in sight, and rampaging through the world’s best teams, you think, hey, that looks do-able. When you hear a mob targeting the disgraced Kabir, who muffs a penalty shot in the dying moments of an important match at the peak of his career, as a Muslim and a gaddaar, you can see the pain and anguish in SRK’s eyes. That’s real, too. But Kabir Khan doesn’t get as far from SRK, as NASA scientist Mohan Bhargav in Swades did.

Still, it is a brave role, executed with finesse, minus starry flourish. And some of the girls spark into life in the best moments in the film: especially the tiny Haryanvi spitfire, the Punjabi lass who lets fly in anger at the drop of a hockey stick, and the pretty thing from Chandigarh who wants to show her cricketing boyfriend just who the real star is. That’s hockey, and the game. Chak De.

By: Shubhra Gupta & Shalini Langer Source: EconomicTimes