Stars: ***1/2
Director: Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra
Cast: Farhan Akhtar, Mrunal Thakur, Paresh Rawal, Mohan Agashe, Supriya Pathak Kapoor
Platform: Amazon Prime Video
One isn’t sure whether the number of makeovers that Aziz Ali (Farhan Akhtar), alias Toofaan, undergoes in the movie is more than the emotional, dramatic, and tear-jerking twists in the plots. He has long and short hair, sports a moustache and different kinds of beards, and is also clean-shaven. The narrative is essentially about the rise, fall, and rise of a boxer. But it also includes seemingly unrelated issues such as terrorism and bomb blasts in Mumbai, the social and religious divide between Hindus and Muslims, love-jihad, and how members of both communities find it difficult to rent a house in India’s financial centre.
Ostensibly, it is an underdog sports story. A small-time bhai from Dongri (that’s where Dawood Ibrahim grew up), an extortionist who works for a gang, becomes a famous state-level boxer. When it is time to make the cut to the nationals, financial need, not greed, forces the Toofaan to fizzle out, and he loses in a fixed bout. Shamed and banned for five years, the professional storm retreats, and Aziz goes through personal turmoil before he settles down to happy family life – a wife, daughter, and a decent travel business (which he starts by buying a taxi on EMIs).
Before he retreats, Toofaan goes through the travails of being a Muslim. He is stereotyped as a possible terrorist – after all, the men behind the two Mumbai blasts in the movie hail from his community. He is asked to hide his identity, and pose as a Hindu if he wishes to rent a house. Or his would-be wife is urged to change her religion – and name (Amina, instead of Ananya) – if she wishes to marry Aziz. Not to forget another sports-social personal twist – Ananya is the daughter of Aziz’s boxing coach, Nana (Paresh Rawal), who thinks of his student as a professional son, but hates and abhors Muslims, and love-jihad.
And then the phoenix rises from the ashes. Or rather, the storm gathers speed once again. A once-fit Aziz, who becomes fat (with a visible paunch that’s on display in case the viewers miss the logic), decides to jump back into the ring, which, according to Nana’s motivational-talk, is like a home to the boxer, and his opponent is an intruder-burglar. There is another fixing twist, this time by the umpire and his former opponent, who seeks revenge for his defeat years ago. All ends well in the end. Toofaan is the national champion, yet another comeback story.
Except, one doesn’t understand why Aziz, the boxer, is so fascinated by Nana! The former says several times that he cannot win without his ‘Sir’. However, the one piece of advice the coach gives if one remembers correctly is “to focus on the opponent’s weak right side” in an earlier match, In the nationals-finals, Nana tells the student that while his opponent fights for a medal (to win), they do so for Ananya. Possibly, this is what inspiration is about. If one there was also a patriotic tadka!
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