‘Striker’ Review: Not Striking

Film: Striker Rating: 2/5 Banners: Studio 18, Indian Films Cast: Siddharth, Aditya Pancholi, Anupam Kher, Padmapriya, Nicollete Bird, Ankur Vikal, Seema Biswas, Anoop Soni and others Music: Shailendra Barve, Amit Trivedi, Yuvan Shankar Raja, Swanand Kirkire, Vishal Bhardwaj, Blaaze Background Music: Shri Cinematography: P S Vinod Director: Chandan Arora Producer: Chandan Arora Release Date: February 5, 2010 The southern star Siddarth has made his solo debut with this movie and it is also the debut of the dusky Padmapriya in Bollywood. Slated to be a true story, whether it is that effective or not, let us see… Story: Surya (Siddharth) lives in the slum with his family and his elder brother Chandra (Anoop) takes him to the carom dens. Soon, Surya develops a liking for the game and since his attempts to go to Dubai fail and his love story with Noorie (Nicolette) flops, he decides to get into the game and after a while gets back to his family and life. He is lured into it again by his childhood buddy Zaid (Ankur) and that gets Surya in the vicinity of local don Jaleel (Aditya Pancholi). Both Surya and Jaleel have few old scores to settle. What happens from there forms the rest of the story. Performances: Siddarth was natural and did his groundwork well for the character, though he is handsome, he doesn’t really have that slum boy kind of look. However, he managed to cover it up with his performance. Padmapriya was dusky and natural to the brim. She looked confident and her body language was neat. Her role was small though. Aditya Pancholi was impressive as the scarred villain and though he has passed his prime, he still looks handsome as ever. Ankur Vikal gave a show stealing performance and acts like a pure Mumbai Tapori. He scores well among the lot. Anupam Kher didn’t have much in his role but he did his job well, Anoop Soni was apt, Seema Biswas was superb, Nicolette was neat, Vidya was good, the others were okay. Analysis: The film is quite serious and it runs purely on the backdrop of Mumbai so that limits its chances of appealing to pan audience across India. The director has come up with an interesting plot but instead of sticking to it, he gets into various subjects and that dissolves the momentum. Script was okay, screenplay was weak, background score was marvelous, two songs were nice, cinematography was top notch. Editing was crisp, costumes were natural and art department was amazing. The first half of the film goes about briskly but it is the second half that gets too serious, brutal and hard hitting. The flip side is that there are many loose ends to the tracks and due to the hopping of subject, the viewer loses interest. There is no entertainment in it and it is a very serious and hard hitting movie so it will appeal to a very selective audience. At the box office, it might not get to the profit mark but it could get back its investment if promoted well. Bottom Line: Not appealing (SiraSri can be reached at sirasri@gmail.com)