chak de "INDIA" @ Independence Day = :-)

Not many are so great and fortunate to witness a movie like this on our Independence Day (tho the issues with tickets were huge). Nevertheless, I am not writing this write-up as a review about the movie, rather its a story of motivation and building-up self-esteem to fight for pride (just like our freedom struggle).

'Chak de' is directed by Shamit Amin and written by Jaideep Sahani. 'Chak de' is a tale of a coach (played by SRK) seeking redemption from his betrayal marks. A long with SRK, movie also contains a dozen of female hockey players (coverly all geographies of India - Punjab, Haryana, A.P., Chandigarh, Jharkand, Manipur, Mizoram, Bhopal, Bihar, etc). Apart from the national participants, international participation is also there - Austrialia, Argentina, Spain, South Africa, England, etc.

Story starts with SRK as the centre forward in the Indian's men hockey team. The last minute pressure is on him to save the game against Pakistan and as always, the start of the movie is all about the unhappy endings. India loses and he is blamed, shattered and given a tag of traiter. Reality shown w.r.t. to TODAY's news channel is also worth mentioning.
It seems as a big-time coincidence that the technical caretaken of the movie (Mir Ranjan Negi, former Indian goaliee) also went through the same shade in 1982 Asian Games (Delhi). India roared en route to the finals, but layed down with 1-7 to Pakistan in finals. However, he silenced the critics when his coached women's team striked gold in Commonwealth Games (2002).

Next reality scene is about the board's meeting for the selection of coach for the India's national women hockey team. They mock the sport, they mock the respective gender and they mock the national sport..sad but being a hockey fan, I know thats true in todays hockey too. But no probs, SRK volunteers for this job and gets it. His job; to strike GOLD in world championship...and before that, to prepare the team...to teach them the concept of unity.

Story picks up the pace and intro to players is full of mast-chatpata local-flavoured dialogues...e.g
caretaker : tamil?
player : telgu
caretaker : donno mein antar kya hai?
player : wahi jo bihar aur punjab mein hai!!

The crux of the story lies in the the way it has been scripted and presented. Efforts to remove the selfish-state flavours, developing unity in them, the different strageries adopted by the coach and ongoing vamps-coach wars...all given good camera attention. One good thing in this bollywood product is the fair treatment to the realistic events, where it was expected the team would lose, they did lost (the match where men's team play against the females was I think very well thought and one couldn't say it was immpractical).

Hockey wise, I didn't saw scoops, fast travelling long passes, those high-powered penalty corners (for which Sohail Abbas of Pakistan is famous for), no exceptional dribbling. I even saw some basic trapping mistakes (which I can only see in our actual Men's hockey team :p). BUT then if you are so much interested in these, why don't to inspire yourself to watch the actual game (n I quite firmly speculate, that you will, once you see this sporty adventure).

OOPS!
SPEAKing on the technical lines of the sport as a hockey viewer, a hockey team carries two goalkeepers when going to play a tournament (if one gets injured, other can be handy). But in the movie, the team had only one goaliee...!!

Nevertheless, its time to accolade. Special compliments should be given to Komal (the girl from Haryana) and Balbir (Punjab). Both were hilarious and apt according to the scenes. SRK, thank GOD, he has done something good w.r.t acting. Karan Johar n company had earlier drastically degraded his acting acumen. So, finally after all those Kabbadi Karan Klassics (KANK, K3G, etc), SRK will be appreciated in Chak De (I can only hope).

Also, a hope in true despiration lies for the success for the sport culture in India. We tend to appreciate sports in movies; Awaal Number and Laggan (Cricket, Aamir Khan), Jo Jeeta Vohi Sikander (Cycling, Aamir Khan), Apne (Boxing, Sunny Deol) and now Chak De (Hockey, SRK)...but when will we appreciate the real sports??

Okie...a question to all INDIANS about their national sport !!

Ques) For what reason (may be), HOCKEY was selected as our national sport?
Ans) May be, because HOCKEY doesn't have any provision for SIXERS in it (:p)

A line which I liked very much -
“Agar haath nahi milaya to tera sar phutega ya mera. Ya to tu jail main jaayegi ya main. Agar jail main nahi jaana, to haath mila le.”
(let this friendship disease spread worldwide ;)