Rating: 2/5
Azhar is a pathetically done movie, and barring Arijit Singh’s melodious numbers, it fails to appeal on all fronts –performance, story line, plots, scenes, and lastly, a climax.
Would you develop a soft-corner for Azhar after watching the movie?
Umm.. Depends!
For the informed ones, Azhar is a wretched attempt to fix the image of the most controversial cricketer India has ever produced, i.e. Mohammad Azharuddin.
For the younger generation who don’t really relate to him or the ones who aren’t aware of the details of his match-fixing allegations, this may be a refreshing movie. After all, the court declared the ‘life ban’ as illegal.
A number of reel-life matches and incidents form the story line of Azhar. They appear patchy and absurd.
When you go to watch Azhar, you are looking out for the facts from his life, a depiction of events from his life as they happened, chronologically. However, to your dismay, there is a long list of disclaimers in the beginning that one is often reminded of along the movie.
A number of facts are butchered: Whereas Shastri’s last match was in ’92 World Cup and Azhar lasted till ‘00, the former is omnipresent in the movie; The players never sang the National Anthem before a Cricket match until very recently; Azhar goes to watch ‘Oye Oye’ (Tridev, ‘89) movie in the theatres whereas his affair with Sangeeta started much later in life.
Apart from the match-fixing scandal allegations, gaudy outfits and jazzy backdrops, there isn’t much happening in the life of Azhar.
The scriptwriter Rajat Arora deserves a huge round of applause for even attempting to write a positive story (from Azhar’s perspective) when there wasn’t one, apparently. It’s a desperate attempt to put-in a few light moments, e.g. Azhar’s father obsessed with how many underwear he carries or Azhar attempting to steal a moment of privacy with his wife.
For a sports-based movie, the crisp and crude conversations in dressing room or in the ground form the backbone of the movie. A commoner is curious about how players and administrators converse amongst each other. With just one exception where an administrator tells that Azhar is a captain and needs to be assertive, all other similar scenes flop miserably.
Apparently, the only purpose of Azhar is to portray that Azhar was a wonderful person at heart, a victim of circumstances and imprudent at trusting people. And yes, that he never did anything wrong. (forget all those confessional statements to the CBI and loads of evidence against him).
To give his life an emotional touch, it is depicted that when the allegations of match-fixing surfaced, no one – family, friends, fellow cricketers, administrators, fans – stood by Azhar.
There is little exploration into what all went into making Azhar the most prolific cricket player of the country. His excellence seemed to have come ‘naturally his way’ rather than being a hard-earned one involving toiling night and day.
Even the attempt to depict Azhar’s pain when he turns from a hero to a villain overnight in the eyes of crores of Indians, is superficial and shallow.
So, all in all, you neither feel for his glory nor his plight. You just hang on to the movie, to see what more Cricket-related event is coming up.
It’s a horrific amalgamation of jumbled up scenes, poor script and disastrous editing. As you take a sip of your aerated drink, you realize, yet again adding to your confusion, that the movie has traversed in time.
Emraan Hashmi plays the damned Mohammad Azharuddin who touched the pinnacles of glory and when his fate went south, was vilified in the press. If the portrayal of Azhar as an incomprehensible, imprudent or a secretive person was deliberate, well then Emraan Hashmi has done a wonderful job!
His narrations are reminiscent of the ones in The Dirty Picture: grand, loud, yet impact less.
Frankly speaking, this is one of the biggest downers of Azhar. Its badly framed one-liners, delivered in supposedly path-breaking style, by Hashmi himself. ‘Allah apne Mohammad ke saath hai’, is just one of the many bizarre ones.
A huge hullabaloo is created about Meera (Lara Dutta) as an ace-prosecution lawyer whom even a Judge fears in the Court. Carrying in her the agony of a fan betrayed by Azhar, she appears venomous, ready to tear apart Azhar in the Court. But she gradually tumbles down on facts, thereby failing to humiliate him in the court. The transition in Meera is incongruous.
Prachi Desai (as Azhar’s first wife) and Nargis Fakhri (as the second one) fail to make a mark beyond a couple of scenes.
Amongst all these unnoticeable performances, Kunal Roy Kapoor as Azhar’s lawyer, Reddy, stands convincing with his Hyderabadi Hindi. He looks marvelously belittled by the prosecution lawyer, fumbles badly with his words and appears terrified of the Judge in the Court.
What’s works for Azhar then? Umm…it’s a Cricket-based movie. For a cricket-fan, there is a curiosity that the movie keeps buzzing with. The regular cricket-match sequences keeps you wondering ‘What’s next’ or what cricket-trivia or side-line tit-bit is lined up.
The way it keeps you wanting all along, the same way, sadly, it leaves you wanting for more too.
For the Cricket-fans out there, with IPL matches happening in the evening, and with not much lined-up in your afternoons, you are likely to enjoy anything that is Cricket-based. You can go for Azhar.
For others, here’s an quote from his first wife I read in an article, in the early ’90. She said: ‘Bas theek thaak hain Azhar!’
Well the movie Azhar is not even theek-thaak.
It’s a very optimistic 2/5 from my side.
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