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Get the latest entertainment news from India & around the world. The film was critically acclaimed and emerged as a super hit at the box-office.ĪLSO READ: Farhan Akhtar's Movies In Which His Character Undergoes Some Mental Trauma See List The film also premiered at the 2010 British Film Institute and London Film Festival. The film was reportedly made on a shoestring budget of ₹45 million (US$630,000). The film had late Irrfan Khan who played the title role, with Mahie Gill, Vipin Sharma and Nawazuddin Siddiqui in the supporting cast. The film released in 2012 and was directed by Tigmanshu Dhulia and produced by UTV Motion Pictures. He was an athlete and won gold medals at the Indian National Games seven times. Still, the conflation of sports and politics in “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag” always feels strained, with Singh’s story remaining most absorbing as a story of personal - rather than national - triumph.Paan Singh Tomar was based on the life of an Indian soldier named Paan Singh Tomar.
Pic rallies for a rousing finale, as Singh agrees to run in the Commonwealth Games, which Mehra and Joshi stage as an Indian analog to Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Overlong even by Bollywood norms, the three-hour-plus pic also spends undue time on the dalliance between Singh and the comely daughter (Rebecca Breeds) of an Australian running coach during training for the 1956 Melbourne Games dewy-eyed walks on the beach ensue, as well as what may be film history’s most unlikely line-dancing, country-western production number (a misfire in the otherwise fine song score by the popular team of Shankar, Ehsaan & Loy). Since there must be a romance, Singh enters into an on-again, off-again flirtation with the beautiful village girl Biro (Sonam Kapoor), though she never quite materializes as a three-dimensional character and somewhat abruptly disappears in the third act. The film does move you a lot in its various brilliant sequences, but with a better edit and more exhilarating background score it could have reached that much desired cult status for sure. “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag” is never quite as compelling in its straight dramatic scenes, many of which feel shoehorned in just to satisfy the pic’s epic designs. Hence, its actually not a Sports movie but a realistic and emotionally moving bio-pic which goes over-length towards the end, unfortunately. Bharathi, brings a lot of dynamism to the racing scenes, from the screen-filling wide shots that establish the lay of the land to the slo-mo closeups of spiked cleats - and, in one memorable scene, bloodied bare feet - gripping the track. Likewise, Mehra, working with regular cinematographer Binod Pradhan and editor P.S. Much of the pic’s midsection focuses on Singh’s gradual evolution into a fierce competitor - familiar stuff made vivid by Malhotra’s fiery performance as Singh’s army track coach, and by Akhtar himself, who trained for more than a year to develop the lean, muscled physique and concentrated gaze of a sprinter in his prime. Still, the seed has been planted, and Singh has resolved that he, too, shall someday call such a blazer his own. Even then, Singh is still something of a village bumpkin surrounded by more sophisticated city types, and Akhtar is especially good at playing this wide-eyed naif, who, in one spectacularly misjudged move, “borrows” the embroidered national team blazer of a visiting track star, who in turn gives Singh a brutal lashing. (The title, which translates as “Run Milkha Run,” are the final words spoken to the 12-year-old by his father, well played by veteran Anglo-Pakistani thesp Art Malik in his Bollywood debut.) Circumscribing all of this is a larger framing story in which Singh’s two longtime coaches (Pavan Malhotra and Yograj Singh) travel across India by train to convince the dejected Singh, brought low by his failure in Rome, to represent India in the Commonwealth Games.Īlong the way, “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag” devotes extended episodes to Singh’s post-Partition life in a Delhi refugee camp, where he is reunited with his devoted elder sister, Isri (the superb Divya Dutta), and to his years as an army cadet, where he first discovers his gift for speed. Pic’s fragmented structure continues to move back and forth in time, as events in Singh’s present trigger memories of the past, particularly the young Milkha (played by Jabtej Singh) witnessing his parents’ slaughter during violent Partition rioting.