Considering the fact, the boxing movies are always a great pleasure to watch like Rocky, Raging Bull, Million Dollar Baby and many more, same expectations are in other movie industries. In Bollywood, I remember Aamir Khan starrer Ghulam had some meat to offer although it was not really a boxing movie. Sohail Khan’s Aryan was Abhishek Kapoor’s first directional success before he went on to make Rock On and Kai Po Che. With a new trend in Bollywood of making biographic movies on sportsmen in India and with major box-office success in Paan Singh Tomar and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, we expect more from last year’s Priyanka Chopra starrer Mary Kom which despite a great box-office success, I found major disappointment.
Mary Kom is legendary figure in Indian sports and world of boxing. She holds breath taking CV with her being 4-times Asian Boxing Champion and 5-times World Amateur Boxing Champion!!! Phewww if that is not enough, then furthermore she is the only woman boxer to have won a medal in each one of the six world championships and first Indian woman boxer to win Gold Medal in Asian Games history which happened in Incheon 3 months ago.
As the human factor subjects prominence in many many legendary careers of greatest and finest names in sports, Mary Kom is no different as she can easily be labeled with the same line ‘an ordinary person with extraordinary story’. But for the sake of entertainment and gleaming box office success to ensure the producers earn a calculated turnover, a true story is minced and realism is denied.
Being produced by big-pocket names Viacom 18 Motion Pictures and Bhansali Productions, the director for such an important project is chosen a first timer!! :S Omung Kumar‘s CV is mostly of Art Direction and Production Designing. Name like legendary Mary Kom deserves a perfect bio epic movie with the most bullet details of her personal and professional life. Many chapters were ignored and many were framed into incorrect times and events. Her childhood part is ruthlessly ignored in minutes. Mary Kom as hardly 8-year-old child finds a glove in the beginning of movie and all of a sudden within a minute, 17-year-old Mary Kom is fighting in college :S How can one ignore the childhood part as she came from a very poor Manipur family whose bread and milk was by working slash-and-burn??
Despite a narrative sketch of brilliant husband-wife chemistry in the movie, one character the director failed to present was Mary Kom’s father-in-law, who was a very important figure in her biography. Her father-in-law was murdered by some gunmen back in 2006 and at that stage, Mary Kom blamed his death on herself and almost gave up her boxing career. Her husband had decided to join rebel group to take revenge of his father’s death. What an important phase of her life never screened!!!
The final fight against her old rival is even a joke. No such incident happen such as shown in the movie as the movie sustained its root to recognize from a typical Bollywood movie. Even the event of final fight is confusing whether it was 2008 World Championship or later. If I assume it was 2008, the movie shows that her rival destroys her in first 2 or 3 rounds and then all of a sudden, the character returns in larger-than-life contest to beat her and take the title, whereas in reality Mary Kom owned her 7-1 in the final :S
Despite winning 5 world titles, the proudest moment in Mary Kom’s career was participation in 2012 London Olympics as for the first time in Olympics history, Women Boxing was included and Mary Kom was one of 36 participants among which she reached 3rd and won Bronze Medal. How in the world director never filmed this biggest moment???
If the movie is planned to watch, then there are only two reasons. One is to know Mary Kom’s life which I have reviewed above how it has been screwed. And other reason which actually is the only plus point of the movie is the soul itself – Priyanka Chopra as Mary Kom. If her mental strength was enough tested in Barfi, here she presented her physical element. Extremely tough physical exercises and her body and soul segmented between a life of boxer and wife equally raises the applauds. She surely makes you think of Million Dollar Baby’s Hillary Swank (I am not comparing ok!!). She is strong and fully ready to take on and suffer many punches in life.
In her character, the only aspect where she couldn’t catch Mary Kom probably was her Manipuri Hindi accent. That was missing. She tried her level best but that is the problem when such an important role to the artist is taught by a teacher/director but here actress has over a decade experience in her profession then the number of times Omung Kumar has sat on director’s seat while shooting.
Rating: 4.5/10
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Sami Naik | Film Critic 