Movie Review - Victory

Victory!! An usual movie with an unusual name. I won't say its an old wine in a new bottle...its rather a cocktail (or mock-tail) of old wines in a Pepsi Can.

Let me first tell you the story of this movie, beyond which I shall share my thoughts about it. The story is of a young cricketer from Jaisalmer called Vijay Shekhawat, played by Harmen Baweja. Vijay's life is cricket, dream is to play for the Indian team and his world is his father, Ramlal (Anupam Kher) and childhood friendie, Nandini (Amrita Rao). Vijay was the talent of the century, with an ability to rewrite the cricket history. However, in the first 7 years of his career, inspite being a phenomenal run getter, he was overlooked for Rajasthan Ranji team due to internal lobbying and politics of team selectors. Frustated he decided to give a last try, at an Indian team practice camp in Jaipur, who were looking for local batsmen for net practice. He blasted Indian bowlers of the likes of Ashish Nehra, Harbhajan Singh, Ramesh Powar in the practice and awestruck the Indian coach. He was soon selected in the Ranji team where he scored a double ton, and forced his way into the Indian team touring Australia.

In Australia he scored 3 back to back centuries, hitting the hell out of bowlers, like Brett Lee and Brad Hogg. Vijay's rise into stardom was meteoric. He became the most sorted after celebrity for Advertisers. During this time he met a guy called Andy Singh (Gulshan Grover) was managed Ad contracts of all celebrities. He signed Vijay in for 100 crores. Vijay never having seen so much fame and money in his life could not handle it. He went, what is best known as the "Vinod Kambli" way. His performance dipped, as well as he got injured, which he hid from the selectors and coach, and played on. Predictably, everything was found out eventually, he was ruined and banned for 6 months from Cricket.

The movie follows its predictable course, wherein Vijay realised his mistakes, and put in his heart and soul to make a comeback. The training session picturization was certainly "inspired' from Rocky. He finally managed to make a dramatic comeback, and regain his fame and honour, as Shahrukh said in OSO, "Happies ending".

The movie is like an series of cricket matches, one after the other. It tries its best to leverage the excitement of cricket matches, which was other wise absent in the movie. Not only does the movie try to bank on the cricket 'masala', it also tries to bring real stars, like Brett Lee, Jaysurya, aapna Bhajji, Rohit Sharma et all along side with Harman Baweja, perhaps to give him some extra support. The movie has surely earned a lot of revenue from in-film advertisements of Brands like Airtel, & Reebok who didn't miss the opportunity of getting associated with Cricket even in a Harman Baweja movie.

Harman, tries to look like Hritik, talk like Hritik, Shahrukh and God knows who, and eventually ends up in a mess. Perhaps he shall do better to play the dummy of Hritik Roshan. Plot is predictable, songs are pathetic. Only brownie points in my opinion are the cricketing stars and sweet pretty Amrita Rao of Mein Hoon Na fame.

So readers, unless you are cricket fanatics, please do not waste your money in multiplexes, but rather watch this movie at Home in VCD.

Adieu.