Biopic is an interesting peek into life of a sports great

Starring: Taapsee Pannu, Mumtaz Sorcar, Vijay Raaz and Devadarshini Director: Srijit Mukherji

BIOPICS have been dominating Bollywood in the past decade, but in recent years many have fallen flat and underperformed at the box office.

This new film attempts to tell the true-life tale of Mithali Raj, who rose from humble beginnings and helped transform the Indian women’s cricket team. The story looks at how the determined sportswoman became good at the game, but also won over teammates and fought against female discrimination off the field.

The formula-driven film attempts to tick all the boxes of a sports biopic with mixed results. The journey of Mithali Raj is brought brilliantly to life with a stand-out turn from lead actress Taapsee Pannu. She puts everything into the character with a transformative performance that captures different aspects of her life, from overcoming odds to emotional battles off the field and being brilliant on the field of play.

This journey is filled with many moments that will delight fans of cricket, but also connect with those who don’t know the sport and enjoy an inspiring rise. Unfortunately, the film focuses too much on the lead protagonist and offers very little insight into teammates that surrounded the wonderfully talented cricketer and so becomes a little disingenuous at times. There also aren’t those big rousing moments that really elevate sports biopics and the music is surprisingly poor.

Many will also find the film too long and a better director could have injected more life into proceedings. These flaws don’t overpower the more enjoyable aspects too much and that is largely thanks to the stunning presence of Taapsee Pannu. Her headlining and the fact this is a little known story globally will keep audiences engaged, especially cricket fans.

It is also an important story at a time female sports like cricket and football are getting more attention. But this sports biopic had the potential to be so much more.