Toofaan (2021)

Let’s get this out of the way – Toofaan is a pathetically bad movie. I can give you so many reasons why it is a bad film, but that is not what this post is about.

I have a grouse with sports movies – they tend make the opponents bad sports persons.

Sport is not about conquering your opponent. It never is. It is about conquering yourself, your fears, and your limitations. If sport were only about defeating the person in front of you, we would not have sports persons continue to better their own achievements.

Sachin Tendulkar did not set out to score more hundreds than Sunil Gavaskar. If he had, then after the thirty-fifth century he would have nothing to reach for. The only way he could reach fifty-one centuries is by running the race against himself.

Lewis Hamilton didn’t set out to beat Michael Schumacher’s record of titles, he trained and worked to be the best he could be. If along the way he toppled Schumi’s records, good for him.

You don’t have to win to win. To win, you have to be better than what you thought you could be. At that moment, irrespective of where you placed, you win.

You don’t reach the pinnacle of a sport by being a bad sportsperson. It’s just not possible. You will be found out along the way. To be a sportsperson, you have to work at it. Days of waking up at ungodly hours, when the rest sleep, so you can get that extra workout in. Evenings where you leave a party because you need a good night’s sleep. Lunches where you want to have one more piece of that yummy chicken but you don’t because it’ll add calories that you don’t want to carry. Miles that you run all alone, with no one to hate, and no one to beat but yourself. That moment when you’ve done your fiftieth push and you do one more, not because your opponent has done it but because you have never done it before.

But in a movie, the hero needs to win and win big. After having reached the Nationals and faltered, the story cannot be that he beat the boy from down the street. He has to win the finals of the Nationals. Great! No issue with that. But the man on the other side has given just as much. He isn’t evil. He is just as good as the hero. Maybe even better. Only then can you complete the story arc. But does that need the opponent to be evil? Isn’t it enough that the hero’s demon are huge?

When you watch Toofaan, it is obviously clear that Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra doesn’t understand sport in general and boxing in particular. His only nod to the spirit of sport is a throwaway line where the protagonist is told that unlike in real life, in sport your opponent is not your enemy. Then there is the cringe-worthy line at the end where the coach tells the boxer, “He is fighting for a medal. You are fighting for Ananya.” I almost puked.

Toofaan has every bad sports movie trope ever seen on screen with the added melodrama that one has come to expect from Bollywood films. Sadly, not even all the hard work Farhan Akhtar has put in can save this really terrible movie.