Thursday, January 07, 2010

Lagaan

My blog resembles a movie review site nowadays!!!

Anyways, now on to another one of my favorite movies - LAGAAN. Ended up watching this sometime last week (have lost count of the number of times I have seen this). “Nothing is Impossible” should have been the tagline of the movie instead of “Once Upon A Time In India”. A wonderful movie which celebrates the “triumph of the underdog” like no other movie does.

One of the best kept secrets about the movie till the time of its release was that it was about cricket. Though it was common knowledge that it was a period film, set in the pre-Independence era, everyone assumed that the movie would be about the Indian freedom struggle. And with a title like Lagaan (tax), you would be excused for assuming that. Though the poster of the movie showed 11 guys standing next to each other, who would have guessed that cricket was its backdrop? Not me for sure!!

Once the movie released, it took this cricket-crazy nation by surprise & awe and went on to become one of the biggest grossers of all time and received an Oscar nomination as well. With a running time of 224 mins, many might not have the patience to sit through this. But definitely not me. I still enjoy everytime I get to watch this! I wouldn’t call this a “sports” movie but a typical bollywood fare with the right mixture of drama, music, emotions, thrills etc etc.

Wonderful performances from Aamir Khan & team (including the Brit actors), neat screenplay, amazing music by AR Rehman, nice choreography and above all, excellent direction by Ashutosh Gowariker puts Lagaan on the “bollywood-movies-not-to-be-missed” list.

It was called the “perfect” hindi movie when it was released. Not too sure about that but then I just love watching it everytime it’s on TV!!


PS – You can look up imdb.com or wikipedia for more info on the movie.

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