Gold Review: An Interesting Quest for the Yellow Medallion

Sethumadhavan 

The Berlin Olympics in 1936 was organized at a time when the world’s political atmosphere was tense, what with Hitler ruling over Germany and challenging the authority of the other super powers. The Second World War was not too far away and the sporting arena also was unable to shake off the influence of what was happening outside. Against this background the Indian hockey team went on to win their 3^rd gold medal, once again as British India. But with the demand for India’s freedom emerging stronger every day, it was but natural for at least some of the people associated with the hockey team to also aspire for bringing the Olympic Gold medal back to independent India. This forms the start of Reema Kagti’s Gold, the 2^nd successive hockey based Indian film in the past few weeks (the other being Shaad Ali’s Soorma).

Most sports based films are told from the perspective of a player or else a coach, but by now we all know that Gold is from the perspective of India’s hockey team manager. I have no idea if someone like Tapan Das (Akshay Kumar) ever existed, but here in Gold it is this gentleman who carries forward the dream of making independent India’s hockey team as the Olympic gold medallist. Tapan Das is an alcoholic and definitely not someone very refined in his manner of speech or approach. No surprise then that he has some detractors within the IHF (Indian Hockey Federation) who make it tough for him to succeed in his mission. But our man is persistent & determined and manages to win the support of the IHF chief and sets about building a strong Indian hockey team with the 1948 London Olympics in sight. But just when everything appears to be going great, tragedy strikes in the form of the announcement of India & Pakistan’s partition. What happens from thereon and how does Tapan manages to realise his dream getting fulfilled is what the rest of the tale is all about.

There is no surprise whatsoever in the writing (Reema Kagti &Rajesh Devraj) allowing for a lot of cinematic liberties, especially with the way the 1948 Olympic hockey finals between India and England turns out. So there’s drama, melodrama and some inspired moments of patriotism all thrown in for equal measure, but thankfully all these are predictable and do not steer away our attention from the core subject. While the focus as expected is on Tapan Das and his struggle to see the Indian National Hockey team getting their rightful place under the sun, thankfully the film also has a few other worthy characters to talk about. There are some interesting moments which make an impact, like the way Samrat (Kunal Kapoor) gets the team to understand the importance of team work in the course of their training program or the way Imtiaz Shah (Vineet Kumar Singh) is forced to decide to migrate to Pakistan. The film also manages to get the period look taken care of comfortably, the choice of locations proving to be of great help as does the cinematography by Alvaro Gutierrez.

For a hockey based film there’s thankfully quite a bit of sporting action and that is handled reasonably well. In terms of performances we see Mouni Roy as Monobina and Nikita Dutta playing the emotional anchors to Tapan Das and Himmat Singh (Sunny Kaushal) respectively and they do what is expected from them. Kunal Kapoor and Vineet Kumar Singh do well and Amit Sadh makes good use of his screen time to leave a mark as the aristocratic Raghubir Pratap Singh. But the one to really impress the most is Sunny Kaushal who plays Himmat Singh with a lot of conviction and control. Akshay Kumar can be said to be guilty of playing to the gallery at times but nevertheless does well in a role that is tailor made for him.

Gold may not end up as a landmark sports drama, but it surely has the ability to hook the audience by and large, thereby an effective job done by Reema Kagti.

Bottomline

Gold is an engaging sports drama by Reema Kagti that is backed by good performances. It may not be the best in the genre, but is an interesting watch nevertheless.

Rating: 3/5