Striker film review

Bored of this board

STRIKER
U/A; DRAMA
Dir: Chandan Arora
Cast: Siddharth Narayan, Anupam Kher, Aditya Panscholi, Seema Biswas, Padmapriya, Vidya Malavade, Nicolette Bird and Ankur Vikal
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Hamlet and Devdas would've taken a bow before this prince of indecision.

It's a recurring feeling you get while watching Striker. Surya (Siddharth) doesn't really know what he wants. As a kid, he looked up to his elder brother and later, rebelled against him.

As he grows up to be a young man, Surya's best friend Zaid (Vikal) turns into a junkie. Surya, meanwhile, gets a job as a delivery boy for diamond traders and jewellers. Zaid tells him about the easy money to be made by simply playing carrom. They land up, time and again, in the clutches of Jaleel (Panscholi), one-time thug, now gambling kingpin of Malvan. Jaleel collects continuing winners of high pressure carrom matches. No goon worth his salt would take a no from a Johnny-come-lately then (on screen) nor does one now (unless he's a caricature). But Jaleel keeps getting turned down by the kid and is more intrigued. Surya starts hustling and is taken in by the lure of making more money.

There's a dead Dubai dream, a pehla pyaar who's whisked away never to be seen again, an independent gal who Surya rapes while drunk and a dead sister to contend with.

Try as he may to bring in the local flavour (as exemplified by Vaastav) or the grittiness of the streets (several gangsta flicks by Ramu et al), Chandan Arora cannot sink all his coins and this comes off a wannabe effort despite the film having a few interesting moments. The film showed promise in the opening reels, steadily wallowing in clichu00e9s thereafter.

While his Striker plays it a little too cocky and overconfident in some scenes and way too intense in others, it is the carrom board set by the writer(s) that does this one in. By Siddharth's own admission in several articles, this was meant to be a vehicle for him, his second well-thought-out B-Town outing. A solo project.

Surprisingly, it is the supporting cast that ends up putting inu00a0 memorable performances.

The one scene where Siddharth's histrionics come to the fore is when he reacts after seeing the corpses of his sis and jijaji. That's it!

Vidya Malavade and Anoop Soni (who play Sid's siblings in the film) have far more strongly etched roles than the film's hero.

Even Jaleel metamorphs from a galli ka dada, into a gambling kingpin to a small-time don. Sid's character's graph remains more or less stagnant, because despite his big wins and his 'khunnas' for everything around him, he cannot turn it into anything constructive and remains an amateur carrom hustler for the most part. For the most part, one wonders why the director picked carrom as a bet-worthy sport at all.

Several subplots are left unexplained. Why doesn't Surya's bro ever become the bad apple, despite the teenage incident scarring him? Where does the elder sister disappear to later on in the film? Why does Surya go back to Jaleel's gambling den on Diwali night? Why does tough cop Farooque (Kher) scr*w the small fry (Zaid) when he could simply let the misunderstanding between Jaleel and Sonu continue and let the two kill each other off? The only casualty of the 1993 riots are Devi (Vidya's character) and her husband even as Surya is roaming the streets during curfew. Why was he? It seems like the riots were added into the story simply as an afterthought to reiterate a point: it's vested interests and not one's neighbours that spark the flames.

This one doesn't know where it's headed and what it wants to do and simply goes with the flow. Not always the best plan. At least not in this case. Wait till it's out on DVD.u00a0 You won't be missing much. Sid skids on this one. You better run for cover!