Gold [dir. Reema Kagti]

Gold is the story of the the first post-independence Indian hockey team playing in and winning the gold medal at the 1948 Olympics conducted in Britain. It is one of those "loosely based on true events" stories, meaning just about everything other than the bare outline is made up. The fact that the real Indian team  thrashed Britain 4-0, while here we are shown a cliffhanger climactic match in which they manage to, at the very end, snatch victory from an unfair opposition tells you what kind of biopic this is.

It would be okay if it was at least made up in an interesting way. Sadly, Reema 'Talaash' Kagti's film pays a lot more attention to detail and verisimilitude in the production design than in the writing. Even as a fictional character the story of Tapan Das, a man who surmounted all manner of obstacles, including his own demons of alcoholism, to put together and guide the team that won the medal, might have been worthwhile if it had been invested with more layered characterization and entrusted to a gifted performer (Manoj Bajpayee, Irrfan Khan, Nawzuddin Siddique - any of them could have owned the part). Here it is wasted on Akshay Kumar dropping yet another big smelly deshbhakti turd. He is supposed to portray a Bengali with a drinking problem; neither aspect carries the required conviction. Mouni Roy as the stereotype nagging-but-affectionate wife only draws attention for her lips, injected with so much silicone they resemble baggage handles.

The supporting cast is talented, but let down by flimsy development. The most notable are Amit Sadh as an affable but egoistic blueblood, Sunny Kaushal as the hothead working-class Sikh who resents him, and Vineet Kumar (Mukkabaaz, reviewed HERE) as a Muslim player who, shortly before the Olympics, opts to shift to Pakistan. Kunal Kapoor as a former captain turned coach is limited to looking noble throughout and his character is an all-too-obvious deus ex machina. Atul Kale plays the jealous sports official de rigueur in almost every Indian sports drama. The bickering between the players, the lessons they learn, the quick-fix remedies for serious issues, the speechifying about setting aside individual egos for national pride...everything is so rote, there's little joy in watching the drama unfold. Lagaan and Dangal were also stories that followed a predictable path, but in building up of little incidents and the peculiarities of their characters, they made us care for what happened. Here, the story of a team that came together for a common (ha!) goal is subverted into a self-serving glory piece for a fictional character purely because he is played by a box-office draw. The makers of Gold would have done better to paraphrase JFK's famous line, "Ask not what your film can do for your star, but what your star can do for your film".