By Joginder Tuteja
Pick up any sports genre film and it would have a standard graph of rise, fall and rise of a sports star. Be it Dangal, Sultan and MS Dhoni: The Untold Story or Chak De India, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag and Mary Kom amongst many others, the overall narrative follows a standard curve. That’s understandable as well. However, Rashmi Rocket surprises in that aspect. This time around, the focus is not as much on this but a courtroom drama that follows a sudden turn of events. That’s what makes this RSVP production interesting and keeps you hooked on right till the end.
Not that the initial scenes of the film are all that exciting. Frankly, the first 15-20 minutes are just about ok as the childhood of Taapsee is shown in a Kutch village. The backstory is hardly inspiring, the banter amongst the family members just about ordinary, the product placement way on your face and the whole saga of why-did-you-leave-running doesn’t holding much weight. In fact the love story that develops between Taapsee and the army man Priyanshu Painyuli (continuing to channelise his inner Sushant Singh Rajput) seems a bit forced into the larger scheme of things as you look forward to the actual drama that would ensure.
Things do get better when Taapsee steps into the track field, begins to make a mark and then reaches the bigger arena to get trained. Then usual Bollywood tropes follow here too with a supporting friend, a shy acquaintance, a couple of bullies, a bit of racism, a hint of favouritism and so on. However, you don’t mind that as director Akarsh Khurana keeps the pace right for the film and the moments in there are engaging.
However, the film gets into a different territory altogether when the gender test sequence arrives. It is haunting, daunting and scary, and makes the viewer wonder what would happen next. This is the point where you know that Rashmi Rocket would follow a different graph altogether and Taapsee too brings to fore the right emotions of a woman who is terrified and also humiliated in equal proportion.
In order to ensure that the proceedings don’t become too dark, Abhishek Banerjee is introduced into the narrative and he ensures that he pretty much owns the second half of the film. As a lawyer who also has a bone to pick up with his mentor opposition lawyer and also the sports association, Abhishek is quite good in the way he goes about bringing to fore his arguments and evidences. Ditto for Supriya Pilgaonkar who plays a judge with a bit of sense of humour too. It’s the interaction between the duo which is the highlight of the movie.
That said, the core of the story isn’t abandoned in this banter and a lot of pertinent points are made about the issue of the gender test. It isn’t taken in a trivial manner and the makers indeed had a task in hand to bring this on in a sensitive manner since the law still exists and that too globally in the world of sports. Still, the film could have been even better had the second half focused entirely in the courtroom drama, just as was the case in Pink, and wouldn’t have got back into the family and pregnancy zone. The song ‘Zid’ comes at the right time though and makes an impact.
The film as a whole too makes an impact and though one can’t say that it is hard hitting, since there are pauses in the narrative that could have been better handled, it still makes an important statement. Watch it, and you would get to witness another side of sports which has been hitherto unseen.
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
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