Star Cast- Amitabh Bachchan, Ankush Gedam,Raziya Kazi,Rinku Rajguru, Akash Thosar,Chhaya Kadam,Bharat Ganeshpure and Kishore Kadam
Genre- Social
Platform of Release – Theatrical
Rating- ***
Inspiring & Elevating!
Jyothi Venkatesh
Writer-director Nagraj Popatrao Manjule’s Hindi debut film Jhund sets out to spotlight a group of impoverished and/uneducated illiterate Dalit youth who inch away from crime, alcohol and drug addiction when a local academic and about to retire Professor Vijay Borade (Amitabh Bachchan) taps their instinctive talent for football. Borade teaches in a Nagpur college catering to the elite upper-class students, while in a sprawling slum in the vicinity, their peers indulge in petty crimes including bootlegging for survival. It is a sports film based on the life of Vijay Barse, the founder of NGO Slum Soccer.
The protagonist Borade one day spots a few young slum-dwellers playing football with a can and realises that the sport could lift them out of their difficult and morbid lives.The film from then onwards focuses on his herculean efforts to win them over, and bring about a change in their priorities wrought by this new interest, and the lengths to which he goes to facilitate their progress and promotion from a narrow marginalised existence.
I would say that though Nagraj Popatrao Manjule’s Jhund is not an outright sports biopic, it follows the usual beats of a good sports drama. Unfortunately, the film which is a very harsh commentary on what we as a society can do to help the have-nots identify their plus points and cross the boundary to leap onto the other, brighter side, at times tends to be more of a documentary than a feature film thanks to Manjule’s temptation of incorporating larger than life speech by Bachchan.
As a writer and director, though Nagraj Popatrao Manjule manages to hold one’s attention for most part of the film, unfortunately the pace slackens by the time there is the interval and the film enters the second half, when you desperately feel that it could do better with a tighter edit as the running time is around three hours in all.
As far as performances are concerned, all that I can say frankly is that Machchan proves that he is a formidable star of the millennium and truly has perfected his art of acting and has a complete command on every scene where he appears, not once ever sets out to overshadow his team of players, always making it a point to add more power to them. The film’s music done by music composer duo Ajay-Atul, who had earlier collaborated with Nagraj in ‘Sairat’ has nothing to crow home about.
Among the rest of the actors I liked the confidence that Rinku Rajguru exudes as Monica Gedam, an underprivileged slum kid of an adivasi family and Ankush Gedam who plays the role of Don/Ankush Meshram in the film), though the same cannot at all be said of Aakash Thosar (seen in Nagraj’s Sairat), who not only has to his credit smaller screen time but also cuts a sorry figure as a guy who is prone to short temper whenever he appears on the screen.
While Kishore Kadam and Bharat Ganeshpure have nothing by way of performance, Chhaya Kadam excels as Vijay Borade’s wife. Rajiya Bagwan, who plays the role of Rajiya Kazi is simply excellent and gets into the skin of her role with effortless ease. Sayali Narendra Patil displays her acting prowess as the upper class girl in the college who gets attracted to Ankush Meshram and instantly reminds you of the good old college days of yore
