Review | 'Toofaan': Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

Actor Farhan Akhtar as boxer Aziz Ali in 'Toofaan' (screen grab).

The best Farhan Akhtar has done is take that shower in Rock On!, everything else is just plain boring. He has a body teens swoon for. But when it comes to this boxing movie, you are forced to say even the trailer of Sarpatta Parambarai (releases on Amazon Prime later this month) looks sharper, grittier and more real than this film.

The more you watch Toofaan on Amazon Prime Video, the more you wonder about the paucity of original ideas in Hindi cinema. Suddenly Madhavan’s Saala Khadoos, and even the over-hyped Mary Kom seem more real. Just because you add bigotry, a Hindu-Muslim romance and loads of ridiculous Mumbai slang to a sports film, doesn’t make it great or ‘different’. It’s just a very sad remake of Rocky.

Also read: Farhan Akhtar: 'Everything I do, consciously or subconsciously, is partly a tribute to Milkha Singh'

Are we impressed by all that training? Not unless you are a diehard fan of Farhan Akhtar. Running by the sea, jabbing the air, Bhaag Milkha leftover training ideas with battling ropes, picking and pushing giant tyres (so conveniently found just lying around), climbing stairs to do the Rocky fists-in-the-air pose are tiresome minutes you don’t want to waste because it’s late at night and this "Ajju bhai ban gaya boxer" stuff is sleep inducing. So are the awkward romance scenes, the never-ending bigotry dialogue that seems terribly forced.

No matter how much of a social media bait it is, a Hindu-Muslim couple trying to find accommodation in Mumbai is very real. Paresh Rawal, who plays a boxing coach (what’s a Rocky without a Mickey) is a very good actor, but you know that already. His pairing with Mohan Agashe is great casting. But Mohan Agashe wins my vote as the better actor when he looks at Paresh Rawal realizing that the little girl is his granddaughter. The two grumpy old men arguing about bigotry makes for an interesting conversation, but not every time they meet. As they say in "Bombay slang", "Bha-Po" (short for "(tumhari) bhavna pahunchi" or "understood what you feel"), once you established that Nana Prabhu (Paresh Rawal) hates Muslims because his wife died in a bomb blast, you don’t have to say the same thing again and again to show us how deep-rooted the problem is. It just ends up being click bait.

So it’s the story of a small-time vasooli bhai Aziz Ali (thugs who collect the protection money for the mafia in Hollywood) who is told to go straight by a girl (how I missed Sly Stallone yelling, ‘Yo Adrian!’). Because it’s Bollywood, the girl, Ananya, is a doctor working at a charity clinic (played rather sweetly by Mrunal Thakur). The clinic also has a cliched "good nurse" played by Supriya Pathak. If Ananya refuses to dress the wounds of thugs, then the nurse will "tut tut" and dress the wounds. You, the audience, groan at the predictability of it all.

How much we loved the ‘Havan Karenge’ group dance song (standard for Bollywood when the hero wins at something, anything) from Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, the magic does not work in the ‘Begani shaadi mein Abdulla deewana’ song. Push fast forward button, except to nod in approval for the happy shehnai that begins the song, plays a melancholy tune when Ananya and Aziz find themselves homeless…

No, this is not a spoiler. You’ve seen too many sports films to not be guessing what happens to good guys who are poor. Yes, Aziz throws a match, gets caught, gets dad bod, and has to train (yes, again!) to win his honour back. Oh lord! What a horribly cliched tale. Poor Darshan Kumar has to be blinded in order to look villainous…

If Chak De! India worked for restoring honour, shouldn’t this work too? Alas, even the scene where Madhavan is acknowledged by his students as their true coach in Saala Khadoos works better. This Toofaan belongs to the sports movies that are also-ran. It doesn’t touch you where the heart is.

And no matter how much Nana Prabhu tells the world, Aziz is Toofaan, you just cannot get the original dialogue from Rocky out of your head, "You’re gonna eat lightning, and you’re gonna crap thunder!"