R Madhavan, who spent two years of his life bulking up to look like the raging ex-boxer in Sudha Kongara’s pugilistic drama Saala Khadoos, was floating in the air after Mike Tyson tweeted that he wanted to see his boxing film. Subhash K Jha revisits Madhavan’s brilliance in the film, which released in 2016.
Director Sudha Kongara Prasad gives us an unusual film where the stereotypical character of the cantankerous boxer meets his match when he picks up a foul-mouthed uncouth boxer for training into championship. There is nothing in the plot to suggest even a whiff of the unexpected.
As a fast-fading boxing coach who finds redemption in a livewire protégée played by newcomer Ritika Singh, Madhavan generates enough power through his performance to nourish the narrative and take us through two hours of unstoppable drama, conflict, humour, and pathos.
The first time when Madhavan’s raging coach Adi sees his future protégée rooting for her boxer sister (played by magician P C Sorcar Jr’s daughter Mumtaz) and putting up a violent fight with the judges at the ringside, we see two things happening on screen simultaneously: the girl as a wildcat and that hungering recognition in Madhavan’s Adi coach’s eyes of having recognized extraordinary talent in the crowd. The moment was far less powerfully done in Aashiqui 2 when singer Aditya Roy Kapoor sees new talent Shradha Kapoor singing under a portrait of Lata Mangeshkar.
Writer-director Sudha Kongara uses Mohammad Ali as a continuous metaphor for excellence in boxing, much in the same way that a film about an aspiring singer uses Lata Mangeshkar. When, at the end, Maddy whispers, “Meri Mohammad Ali,” to his protégée, he subsumes in that moment his entire pride in nurturing new talent.
Saala Khadoos constructs a case study for a lingering guru-shishya kinship through scenes and dialogues that are unnerving in their capacity to accommodate all the ingredients associated with the mentor-pupil genre of cinema (there is even a distinct dash of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black in stormy liaison between the leader and the bled). Yet, there is a freshness in the dynamics that define coach Adi(Madhavan)’s relationship with his protégée Madhi. The two actors, especially the more experienced Madhavan, dig deep into their respective characters’ psyches to draw out character-defining traits and quirks that penetrate the sometimes-shallow, sometimes-sublime treatment of the subject.
The songs, all mercifully in the background, show a clear influence of the director’s long association with Mani Ratnam. My pick of the lot is the Sunidhi Chauhan-rendered ‘Jhalli pataka’, where the startling discovery Ritika Singh does what Madhoo did in the song ‘Chotisi asha’ in Mani’s Roja and Aishwarya Rai did in the song ‘Barso r’e in Guru. A spontaneous eruption of feminine joy amidst girlie giggles.
The confrontation between the two boxer-sisters in the canteen, though excessively melodramatic, shows the eruption of long-suppressed friction between the siblings bubbling to the surface in a surge of sordid accusations and counter-accusations. Powerfully done sequence.
Sexual harassment in workplaces gets on the fast track when Madhi (Ritika Singh) is summoned to the train compartment by the perverse coach, played brilliantly by Zakir Hussain (a regular in Ram Gopal Varma’s film), and she realizes what he wants. She hits him where it hurts the most and tells him it is people like him who stop women from excelling in sports.
Madhavan’s Adi is confronted by Ritika Singh’s Madhi after he resigns from his job to save her sports career. ‘If this is not love, what is?’ the girl wonders aloud, echoing what Lata Mangeshkar sang thirty years ago in the song ‘Le main tere vaaste sab chhod ke aa gayi’. Men can do it, too! Give up their dreams, wealth, and whatnot for love.
Madhi’s wastrel drunkard of a father (Kaali Venkat) suddenly acquires a conscience!! He is on the roof of the family shack, “stealing cable” so that the family can watch their daughter’s big match. The redemptive theme is thus extended from the protagonist to the fringe players. I almost expected the perverse Zakir Hussain character to throw in the towel and unsubscribe his annual shipment of Viagara.
Nassar, that brilliant Tamil actor playing a small-time boxing coach, has a lovely little moment at the airport when he tells Adi, ‘You’re a good man’. He echoes what we all feel by then.
After her final triumph in the boxing ring, Madhi runs towards her coach, mentor, friend, and hopefully lover and jumps into his lap like a baby. This superb ‘Lolita’ moment is sublimated by the sexual innocence that Madhavan and Ritika Singh bring to their relationship. Can the two ever be lovers? They know each other too well to sleep on the same bed.
The narrative is virile and vibrant. The energy level is mostly high. And yes, Madhavan’s AMAC(Angry Middle Aged Coach) act crackles with far more tension than what Shah Rukh Khan brought to a similar role in Chak De. This is Madhavan’s career-defining performance. He sinks so deep into his role, both physically and emotionally, that the actor becomes one with the act, the dancer and the dance, the sports and player merge and melt into one another with a soul-stirring fluency.
Regrettably, the material offered for the two very fine central performances flounders for lack of heft. Wispiness and, even worse, weariness creep into the lengthy narrative, especially when the girl begins her embarrassing seduction act over her coach. I held my breath for the seduction song, which luckily didn’t come. It’s all charted territory explored by two adventurous players who certainly deserved a more rewarding journey with many more bends and curves.
It’s not as if the writer-director plays it safe all the way. There are some moments in the film when the combustive energy of the mentor and the protégée threatens to flare up into something impressively explosive. But the Big Moments are squandered in stereotypical exchange of insults and invectives, all peppery and vinegary but not quite adding up to the life-giving food for thought that you hope and pray it would eventually turn out to be.
Saala Khadoos is an unabashed, unapologetic, and unalloyed rabble-rouser whose two main characters’ graph moves together from the opposite sides of the moral arc—he gruff, cynical, and burnt-out…she, raw, eager, and stepping out into the big wide world. We both know they would find their redemption together. It’s the way the cookie crumbles.
However the Adi-Madhi journey should have secreted more curves and bends than what we see. But we really can’t complain. Saala Khadoos promised a rugged sports film. And it delivers. The film, though lengthy, never makes a dull watch. Sathish Suriya’s editing is sharp. It takes away the rough edges from some of the awkwardly written scenes where the lines seem to be borrowed from rejected episodes of Chandrakanta.
But let’s salute the film’s third hero. Sivkumar Vijayan’s camera work glides across the simmering surfaces, capturing the anger, frustration, and bitterness of Madhavan’s character before moving inwards to peer into the anatomy of human failure and redemption.
Alas, the film itself doesn’t match up to the glory of its stunning visual velocity or its leading man’s towering performance. This is Madhavan’s Raging Bull. By far, it is his career’s finest performance. The film could have been better, though. Much better.
