Review: Chak De India!

About a year ago, I watched Kabhi Alveida Na Kehna, a full-scale Bollywood spectacle about love and adultery starring some of the biggest names in the business (Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Preity Zinta, and the Bachchan boys). The movie was so over the top - too much crying, too much song, too much this, too much that - that I felt compelled to take a long break from Hindi cinema.

A few days ago, I felt ready to get back into the Bollywood sphere. With only a few days left in India, my sister and I decided to watch Chak De India, a movie about the Indian women's field hockey team (field hockey is a very big deal in India), their coach, and their quest to bring glory to the Motherland. A priori, the movie had a few things going for it:

-No love story
-No breaking out into song
-Shah Rukh Khan in the lead
-The movie centers around sports and Indian pride

There were also a few negatives:

-Shah Rukh Khan in the lead
-Produced by Yash Raj Films, which has a history of putting out over the top, gooey cinema

The verdict? Chak De is absolutely fantastic. The movie centers around a former Indian national side field hockey player (Khan) who falls into disgrace by missing a final penalty shot against Pakistan in a World cup final (he is accused of intentionally helping the Pakistanis win and the resulting craziness is well portrayed). Seven years after the fateful missed shot, Khan seeks a chance for retribution by coaching a talented, yet mercurial Indian women's side to World Cup glory.

Not only is Chak De India a good Hindi movie, but its also a darn good sports movie. Yes. I've taken the qualifier 'Hindi' out of the equation. Chak De certainly has all the hackneyed elements of a typical sports film, but the beauty is that each is 'Indianized' in a very effective and compelling matter. Here are some examples:

-Team Bonding: Almost every sports movie centering around a team starts out with the team members at odds with each other. Over the course of the movie, they set their differences aside and become an effective squad. In Chak De, the penultimate team bonding moment occurs when the girls beat up a gang of eve teasers in McDonald's. It a scene that has to be seen to be believed. (Anyone whose ever walked around with a female relative in an Indian city will truly appreciate the moment! This was definitely one of my favorite scenes.)

The other aspect of team bonding which is quite unique is that each of the girls hails from a different state in India. As a result, team bonding is used for a metaphor for national pride superceding regional pride in the goal seeking process.

-The Tortured Coach: The beauty of Shah Rukh Khan's role is that the coach displays steely determination throughout the film in seeking glory for India. Besides his personal demons, there is no other side story or distraction. Khan's coach is tough, unrelenting and driven, and this attitude slowly seeps into the girls' mindset during the course of the film.

Shah Rukh Khan has done a really good job in this film. This is the Swades or Hey! Ram Shah Rukh that I love to watch: restrained and expressive. There is no Kabhi Alveida Na Kehna buffoonery or excessive crying here.

-The Back Stories: Usually there are some compelling back stories for some of the players to make the action more meaningful. In Chak De the stories center around chauvanism, expectations of familial responsibility on the part of women, etc. Very germane to an India that is changing in both economic and sociocultural dimensions.

-The Montages and Action Sequences: Regarding the former, these sports montages are as good as any I've seen (save the Rocky movies). Regarding the latter, apparently each of the girls (all newcomers in the acting arena) were taught to play hockey over the course of some weeks. I know little about field hockey, but the action looks pretty convincing to me. Definitely well done.

The inevitable comparisons will be with Lagaan, a movie about cricket and independence that won international acclaim. I think such comparisons are unfair. While Chak De and Lagaan share common elements - the underdog story and cross-cultural unity in particular - the message and scope of the two movies are completely different.

The bottom line? See this movie. The acting is great, the action is great, the music is rocking and the goose-bump moments are plenty. You also get a lot of social stuff: women's empowerment, national pride and unity, among other messages. This is good fare and, for me personally, a great re-entry into Hindi cinema.