Opening Doorz

By Martin D’Souza | Opening Doorz Editorial | July 17, 2021

Rating: 1 / 5

The essence: Toofan is a wasted enterprise of 162 minutes! The only scene that has some essence is just one: between coach and boxer, towards the end. Not to mention the painstaking body sculpting by Farhan Akhtar. If he had taken as much pain in the scripting, maybe his work in the gym would have been worth it.

Toofan Movie Review

Toofan is not a movie. It is a boxing showreel for Farhan Akhtar. An enterprise by Excel Entertainment and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, two of the brightest names in Bollywood, who have between them, not understood that this film was a disaster from scene one.

As a movie, Farhan Akhtar did not deserve this. An astute filmmaker and actor, he should have resisted his urge of glorifying himself over the script. As a viewer, well, he has realised that they too did not deserve this. Too late in the day!

Dongri ka ladka, an orphan working for some Don, Aziz tries his hand at boxing at the request of a doctor in a hospital nearby who he keeps visiting (breaking the line at OPD). The doctor falls in love with him immediately. No motive. Oh yes, there is also the Hindu-Muslim angle which is treated in the flimsiest of manner. And the boxing coach? The less talked about him the better. 

Flashback to the Nineties

We also have the staple diet of a side-kick for the hero which was a must in the Nineties. Hussain Dalal gets that unenviable role. Even Gulshan Grover during his heydays had better sidekicks in his movies. Ding Dong! Oh Yes, Aziz Ali the boxer also breaks into singing a song in his Muhalla.Tapori ishtyle, to top it. The entire plot is flimsy and takes you back to Bollywood when films were made without thought for the plot. 

Mrunal Thakur as Dr Ananya is once again unconvincing. There’s just one set of expressions she has for all her scenes, throughout the film. Paresh Rawal as the boxing coach is caught in a sort of crossover jam: he does not know whether this is an art film or a sports film and he has both his legs in the commercial genre!   

Darshan Kumar, that fantastic actor, is saddled with a corny role and trapped in the flimsiest of manner, over a scotch bottle, fixing a match. Vijay Raaz and Supriya Pathak too face the same fate. No role, just scenes to be present in.

Toofan is a wasted enterprise of 162 minutes! The only scene that has some essence is just one: between coach and boxer, towards the end. Not to mention the painstaking body sculpting by Farhan Akhtar. If he had taken as much pain in the scripting, maybe his work in the gym would have been worth it.

You don’t have to step out of the house to watch Toofan. It’s on Amazon Prime. You also have the luxury of taking long breaks when bored.

CREDITS
Producer: Excel Entertainment, ROMP
Director: Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra 
Star Cast: Mrunal Thakur, Farhan Akhtar, Supriya Pathak, Vijay Raaz, Paresh Rawal, Hussain Dalal

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