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EDITOR'S PICK
Rating: ***
Combining sports and politics is not an easy thing to do. But then it`s
not that difficult either, considering the two are inextricably intertwined
specially in the Asian subcontinent. Debutant director Sanjay Puran Singh
Chauhan dares to visit the forbidden territory.
Lahore is about sports and politics and characters from both the
spheres getting embroiled in a terrible fight to the finish.
The script accommodates a great deal of the sporting spirit as seen in the
perspective of Indo-Pak politics. Within that ambitious framework, Chauhan
weaves in the human relationships that make a leap for warmth and then stay
stuck in semi-sterility. The film has too much to say on sports, politics and
human nature. It isn`t able to say all of it in a lucid language.
Chauhan has chosen a unique sport like kickboxing to spotlight the process of
cultural assimilation that underscores all the perverse politicking that goes on
at the surface level between the two countries.
The Indian and Pakistani coaches played by Farooque Shaikh and Sabyasachi
Chakavarty are seen to be sportingly at loggerheads, but Lahore
takes the spirit of sportsmanship across the border with more seriousness of
purpose.
In the boxing ring, the game gets deadly when the Indian kickboxing champion
Sushant Singh is delivered a deadly blow by his Pakistani opponent. A churning
point in the narrative is arrived at in restrained rhythms.
This is where Chauhan`s narrative comes into its own. The dilemma of the
deceased kickboxer`s younger brother Veeru (newcomer Aanaahad) to preserve his
sporting spirit in the midst of high-voltage mutually-destructive Indo-Pak
politics is built into the plot with architectural astuteness.
Not all of the material outside the central conflict, where Veeru forsakes
cricket to pursue his slain brother`s dream in the kickboxing arena, works on
the scripting level.
Does Veeru only want to use the boxing ring to avenge his brother`s death?
Though the characters falter in quantitative excess, the opposition of sports
and politics and politics in sports is put into a persuasive perspective. The
rest of drama tends to get tedious mainly because there are too many characters
swarming the Indo-Pak map.
Veeru`s romantic attachment to the Pakistani girl (newcomer Shraddha Das) is
skirted across in a few scenes where they exchange veiled pleasantries. Passion
is seriously forfeited in the flurry of squeezing in a large canvas of
characters.
It`s in the kickboxing scenes that the film exudes blood, sweat and tears.
Aanahaad and his opponent Mukesh Rishi reveal a skill in the ring that cannot
leave the audience unaffected.
Aanahaad does well in the sports scenes, but needs to brush up his skills in the
emotional moments.
Of the rest of the cast Nafisa Ali, Ashish Vidyarthi, the late Nirmal Pandey and
several other talented actors are wasted in sketchy roles. The film`s surface is
over-populated. But its inner life suggests a sincerity of purpose.
Wayne Sharpe`s background score and Neelabh Kaul`s cinematography are first
rate. They add to the feeling of a film that goes beyond sports, but stops short
of making a statement on life lived on the border of hostility.
Lahore is not only about kick-boxing. At times you wish it was.
Lahore with the backdrop of a violent sport, kickboxing, tries to depict a strong message of unity and sportsman spirit between two nations - India and Pakistan. It`s a statement on the impact of sports on the lives of people through the medium of two brothers and their love for each other.