Maidaan full movie download hindi dubbed 2024
Maidaan full movie download
Writers: Akash Chawla, Sidhant Mago, Saiwyn Quadras
Stars: Ajay Devgn, Priyamani, Gajraj Rao
Maidaan Movie Full Review
Everyone loves an underdog story. Sports underdog? Even better. Football? NOICE? Historic? Biopic? Major movie star? Tick tick tick. But when your film is 3 hours long, people are going to have questions.About 5 years in the making, Maidaan sachi kahaani hai Indian football coach Syed Abdul Rahim ki, who guided the country through what has been called the “golden age of Indian football” 50s aur 60s mein, joh exaggeration nahi hai agar Olympics ko standard maan kar dekhe, kyunki 1960 ke baad se India ki football team hasn’t qualified for the Olympics.
Ajay Devgn play kar rahe hain Syed Abdul Rahim, joh despite all odds India ki football team ko world class banaane mein successful rahe. It is an incredible underdog story, considering tab desh ko azaad huye mushkil se 10 saal huye they, aur players pichle Olympics, 1948 mein, bina jooton ke maidaan mein utre. All the dramatic plot points required for a theatrical re-production are present within this story, heck they make UP the story. To make this cinematic version though, director Amit Ravindrenath Sharma works with 7 writers! Saiwyn Qaudras, Akash Chawla and Arunav Joy Sengupta are credited for story while screenplay credits are shared among Saiwyn, Aman Rai, Atul Shahi, director Amit Sharma himself, Ritesh Shah is the dialogue writer AND additional dialogue credits are given to Siddhant Mago. That’s a total of 8 people.
Director — Amit Sharma
One wonders if it is because of this pretty huge group of writers, that the film pauses to talk about and expand on so much, contributing to its 3 hour run time. I am not opposed to long movies, with or without interval, if a screenplay requires that much time, that’s the time it should take, epic stories need room to expand. However, Maidaan mein kahaani ke beats, turns, aur conflict predictable, aur repetitive hone ki wajah se yeh 3 ghante ki duration justify karna mushkil hai.
For better or for worse, and I apologise in advance for bringing this up even, but Shimit Amin’s Chak De India perfected a very specific underdog sports story that’s uniquely Indian: yahaan pareshani players ya coach ki kami se nahi hoti, India mein bureaucrats aur babu/uncle culture comes in the way of sports, arts, anything that has government control. And for better or for worse, every sports film with a fallen-from-grace coach who tries to put together a rag-tag team of multicultural players no one believes in, in a sport jiski management is overrun with corruption, competing in international tournaments where all the other teams have better equipment, will BE compared to Chak De India. It just so happens also, the coach in both these films is also a Muslim man. But unlike Chak De, how the coach’s religious identity comes in his way, the film isn’t interested in exploring.
Is that to say Syed Abdul Rahim’s incredible true story cannot be told via cinema? Absolutely not, its reductive to even think that way. But it does mean that the film will have to try that much harder to stand apart, especially if it wants to be 3 hours long.
Syed Abdul Rahim
Iss kahaani ke conflict hain kuch evil Bengali sarkaari karmachari eating Roshogulla most evil-ly. Rudranil Ghosh is Shubhankar, the aforementioned Roshogulla-eating Bengali man, and is more or less the main villain of the saga. Gajraj Rao, is the more interesting and sorta kinda novel antagonist role of a journalist drunk with power, but unfortunately, despite the journalist seemingly being the mastermind of operation discredit coach Rahim, Shubhankar, the federation official gets the extended screen time where Rudranil is made to do the corrupt sarkari managing officer schtick Hindi cinema loves to do. The sneering, the terrible one-line uncle style joke maaaroing, greedily eating messy snacks in a conference room.
Maidan resorts to a cliché too many, disappointingly for a film with so many writers. All the bad guys are BAD GUYS, lacking an ounce of humanity. Rahim’s wife, played by Priyamani is preparing for an English exam, but eventually is only reduced to the woman who weeps with her husband and gives him the one pep talk, shaking him out of his funk. Even when Rahim is diagnosed with the lung cancer that eventually took the man’s life, Ajay Devgn coughs and coughs and coughs, you can predict when the close-ups of the blood-stained white hankerchief are going to show up, with they do, bang on cue. When the bad guy says “kisi ko bhi aapka jeetne ki ummeed nahi hai’’ with a thundering underlay underlining just how much of a bad guy he is, even the slightly perceptive viewer knows the next match is likely to result in victory. So how will you make it exciting?
Certainly not by inserting two enthu commentators rattling off stats with sincerity and political tensions with somberness, their narrations peppered with little-little jokes. The exposition device is easy but acceptable, by this point you’ve stopped expecting the film to do anything new. Here they are played by Abhilash Tahpliyal and Vijay Maurya, two very able actors, serving the purpose adequately.
Also adequate, Ajay Devgn. A fine actor, Ajay Devgn’s mere presence elevated the most predictable trope-y scenes. But any nuance he brings to the scene is almost instantly drowned by deafening background score, a department where AR Rahman seemingly has no chill.
Maidaan spends too much time on the build-up, languishing among cliches and stereotypes for far too long. There are sparks of newness in between. In a particularly effective scene coach Rahim gets off a rickshaw to buy cigarettes and sees a kid playing football in the streets wearing chappal, not caring if he steps in gobar or dirt, as long as he’s kicking the ball. Rahim meets the kid later and says tum acha khelte ho par stamina ki kami hai, to which the kid replies, yeh chai aur biscuit kha ke main poora din khel sakta hoon. Ek minute pehle dikhaa rahe hian ki chai mein paani mila kar who pee raha hai, jis se ki pet aur bhare. It’s a moment that could have offered a deeper insight into why kids were playing football in the streets in a newly independent India, how folks had taken to this foreign sport, that needs only the ball in the form of equipment, for 20 people to enjoy together, hence inviting folks from all levels of society. Was this messy, wild sport the antithesis, the foil to the “gentleman’s sport”, cricket?
We do spend a little bit longer meeting other players, most notably captain PK Bannerjee, played by Chaitanya Sharma. Girls like him, and he is scouted from a match one day by Rahim, and we get to know precious things about him. And even lesser about the other members of the squad, the team that incredibly reached the Olympics semi-finals in 1956.
Maidan isn’t so much about the heroism of the players as it is about everything that was in their way, choosing to focus on the victim narrative. The missed opportunity comes more sharply into focus film ki last act mein. Its 1962 aur Jakarta mein ho rahi Asian Games mein controversy erupt hoti hai jab Indian official Guru Dutt Sondhi Indonesian government ke behavior par critical statement ek dete hain. This leads to demands that Indian teams be ousted from the game, in one scene you see a mod of violent protestors attack the bus the unsuspecting football team is in. Despite the loud hostilities, injuries, and a coach coughing up blood, the team puts its best foot forward and goes on to deliver the kind of performance that’s instantly historic. Capitalizing on the anger the film knows this display of hostility will arouse in the audience, AR Rahman’s score kicks up many many notches, as DOPs Tushar Kanti Ray and Fedor Lyass design sublime and rousing POV shots, taking you within the game, right next to the football being kicked around in the most immersive, exhilarating fashion. The sportsmen are flying in slow motion, crying, yelling, screaming, their pent-up frustration letting out. Despite having watched the film for 2.5 hours at this point, all you know about these men is that the football federation has tried to stop them every step of the way, but when this sequence is handed over to AR Rahman, it comes alive, unlike the mostly static film that preceded it.
The closing credits feature some of the actual players who were a part of this winning team, back on a football field, some now in wheelchairs, and some who since these portions were shot have passed away. These might be the most impactful moments of the film, if you think they’re worth sitting through the rest of it, the film is now in theaters.
So, on a scale of 1 to 10, Maidaan is……..64 years since the Indian football team qualified for the Olympics? When was the last time you watched India ka football match, bataao comments mein.
No comments