Saala Khadoos

saala khadoos
Directed by: Sudha Kongara Prasad
Produced by: R. Madhavan and Rajkumar Hirani
Written by: Sudha Kongara Prasad
Starring: R. Madhavan and Ritika Singh
Music by: Santhosh Narayanan
Cinematography: Sivakumar Vijayan
Edited by: Sathish Suriya
Production company: Y NOT Studios, UTV Motion Pictures,
Rajkumar Hirani Films and Tricolour Films
Release dates: 29 January 2016
Story line:
Adi Tomar had a dream to win the boxing gold for India. Instead he languished in a nightmare for a decade as his gloves were spiked during an all-important match, blinding him in the arena and handing the match to his undeserving opponent-a mediocre boxer but a political powerhouse. The culprit was his own coach, Dev Khatri. Shattered by his loss, and disillusioned by the state of Indian boxing, Adi turned to a life of cynical self-destruction of booze, brothels and bar-fights. Loyal friends somehow bring him back to boxing as the coach of the lowly rated Indian women’s boxing team. His outspoken honesty sends jitters through his old adversaries, and he is soon transferred to Chennai-the Siberia of Indian boxing. But Adi continues to dream but this time for a free-spirited, fiery young woman from the fishing community, Madhi. Adi spots in her a champion that could bring India the gold that he was robbed off. But first Adi must earn her trust, then tame her impetuosity and finally make her dream… all this in just nine months before the world championship. And so begins an uneasy partnership between a man who loves his sport and a girl who loves her freedom. Rigor and rebellion, structure and free spirit collide. It is the beginning of a beautiful friendship and a journey towards an impossible dream.
Know more about the captain of the Ship, the director:
Sudha Kongara Prasad is an Indian film director and screenwriter known for her works in Tamil cinema, Telugu cinema, and Bollywood.  She debuted as a screen writer for the Indian English film Mitr, My Friend, which won the Best English Film of the year award at the 49th National Film Awards. She then worked as associate director for various works, including Mani Ratnam’s films such as Guru. During the production of her first directorial venture Drohi (2010), Sudha Kongara Prasad began writing a sports drama film on boxing. In mid-2013, she approached Madhavan, who was on a sabbatical from Tamil films, to portray the lead role in the film and his presence in the project, helped take the financial viability of the venture to a higher level. The pair had previously collaborated in Madhavan’s films under the direction of Mani Ratnam, where Sudha had been an associate director
My Gut Feel and comments:
Promo of  Saala khadoos reminds films like Mary Kom, iqbal and chakde India which revolve around a journey of dreamers who made big after a struggle. One more common element seems captured beautifully is a love hate relationship of a coach and a player where coach pushes hard to bring out best in a player which lead to success of a player eventually. In case of this movie title  Saala khadoos belongs to to R. Madhavan who is aggressive, short tempered and strict coach. Sudha Kongara Prasad the director of this movie first narrated this script to Madhavan in 2011 and as Madhavan liked the script he took the responsibility of finding the producer for the movie. It took a while however he did manage to find the producers for producing both tamil and hindi version.  Shooting for both the versions happened simultaneously with same star cast R. Madhavan and Ritika Singh in lead roles. Ritika Singh is a boxer by profession in real life too and not a trained actor. Both sudha and Madhavan were convinced from day one that they want a real life sports person for this film which was indeed a risk however seems paid off well. Saala khadoos seems  honest sincere effort from creative team and should register an entry in good sensible sports based films which we have seen in recent past.
Going by my gut feeling I am giving this movie 3 stars out of 5, one days before the release.

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