Audience Movie Review: Azhar

Emraan Hashmi's Azhar have hit the big screen today, and we've got you the first half review here:

If you had settled in expecting a fair game of cricket, there might as well be some disappointment coming your way. 40 minutes into Azhar and there's no way you can judge him like the tag line asks you to do. It's more of a one sided frame of affairs so far. Everything about Azhar builds up to an interesting flow of things to follow. However, the initial yet brief angle of romance between Azhar and Naureen tones down things to an extent. As no brainer as it gets, Rajat Arora's dialogues yet again look like winning away the show. Emraan shows promise, he shows strength and he gets into the skin of Azhar big time. The not so distracting screenplay has its narrative set yet it's those over dramatic sequences that you wish the makers had avoided. Plenty done, plenty to follow.

Anybody who’s seen him bat would remain cognizant of the immense talent Mohammad Azharduddin carried all his life. The man himself at a press conference reminded people that while his sharp fielding has often been the highlight of his career, his batting wasn’t that bad either. However, when you come out of watching this take on his life, you’re kind of filled with similar feelings. You want to remember it for less important aspects rather than its core.

As much as you’d like a filmmaker to give you an edgy ride with a deeper touch to reality, Azhar with all its plusses seems like a big exercise to streamline a fallen hero. Fifteen minutes into the movie and you’ll know that even if it rushes us through some of the actual past events, it will only end up like you have been guessing. From Manoj Prabhakar’s series of stings to Hansie Cronje’s testifying, Azhar has an answer to every question we had over the years, yet it’s the attitude of the film that makes those answers look so dramatic.

Emraan Hashmi though has found the skin of the character with all its panache. If there’s something that stays with you after you’re done is Emraan and his performance. The leg glance and the hard work that he keeps talking about is visibly evident on screen. His knack at having handled relationship issues (in movies) before gives him an edge here to carry off those scenes, however the segment affects the script as an uninvited set of elements in the narration. This is where Tony has botched up bigtime. At a time, when Azhar could have made or break the anxiety building up in audiences mind, he chose to let go of all by driving the story nowhere. Although, Prachi Desai and her ‘performance’ does earn her some sympathy, it doesn’t give take away the fact that Azhar’s script gets heavily dented by romance.

Having said that, everything is not as downhill as it seems! From dressing room moments to key spells of the 90’s cricket, Azhar effectively guides us through what the atmosphere was like. The cricketing rudiments of the film have been handled that gives you sense of connect. Nargis Fakhri is forgettable and the support cast holds well on its own to compliment Hashmi on several occasions.

Azhar in totality is one of those matches that you won not because you played well, but the other team just didn’t turn out! Though for all the effort that Emraan put behind this work of ‘dramatized biopic’, he deserves some extra marks!

Here's what one of our MJ has to say about the movie so far:

Also, Rate the movie here: