Striker Movie Review.

Behind the Movie Striker: Siddharth, the young hero who loves to experiment is not only known in Tollywood but has made his name big with ‘Rang De Basanti’ competing with odds like Aamir Khan in Bollywood. Many across India have waited for this ‘Striker’ for its innovative title and of course based on real life of a Caroms player. Heroine Padma Priya was also pick of this movie. Let us see, how this Striked has holed the audience?

In the Movie Striker: Suryakant Sarang called as Surya (Siddharth) is young child in a poor family living in Mumbai’s juggi jopidi. Surya falls ill during his childhood and misses his school life. He takes up carom board play for time pass but soon it becomes passion by help of his elder brother Chandrakant (Anup Soni) who teaches him techniques of the game and Surya even wins the Under 12 Junior Carom Championship. But this is not enough for Surya as his madness for Carom grows on with his age. Surya in order to sustain his family financially stars to gamble with this game earning money to live for Dubai.

Soon Surya is cheated by an overseas consultancy looses all his hard earned money and his neighbor lady love Noorie (Nicolette Bird). Surya starts leading new life, but with support of his childhood muslim friend, a drug addicted Zaid (Ankur Vikal) and Madhu (Padma Priya) he is on accumulation of money for his sister’s (Vidya Malvade) marriage.

Here comes the big twist as Surya runs into problems with local gangster Jaleel (Aditya Pancholi) who even has some past troubles with Surya’s brother Chandrkant. Story entirely shifts from here on to a communal phase dealing with 1992 Mumbai riots where in Surya’s sister and brother in law are killed and how does Surya along with Inspector Farooq (Anupam Kher) deal with Jaleel forms the climax.


Values of the Movie Striker: Siddharth as Suryakant Sarang has thrown life into the role. Siddharth proves that he is one of the best actors of present era. His dressing, looks, language resembled exactly a Mumbai slum dweller. It is a great point that entire movie revolves around the character of Suryakant and Siddharth happily takes the burden on his shoulders coming out colorful. Aditya Pancholi as local gangster was good in creating bad feeling. Ankur Vikal’s cool attitude and comic timing gets you refreshed a bit. Anupam Kher, Nicolette Bird and Padma Priya doesn’t have too much to performa dn of course they did justice to their roles.

Chandan Arora, the director of movie has picked up good subject with enough stuff to set in the backdrop of communal riots of 1990’s in Mumbai’s slums. Director’s hard work in exposing the lives of Mumbai slum dwellers has worked well. Script work could have been still more asking. Picking up too many subplots to the main plot has decreased the feel in the movie. Photography by PS Vinod was outstanding as some typical flavor touched the entire movie and he is at his best when getting the Mumbai slums on screen. Music by Vishal Bhardwaj, Yuvan Shankar Raja, Amit Trivedi, Blaaze, Shailendra Barve and Swanand Kirkire is good. Production values by Studio 18 and Indian films are also the best.

Out of the Movie Striker: First half of the movie is neat and Director conveyed exactly what he wants to. When movie enters second half, too much of serious phase and the exact message comes to strike, Director has lost the intensity in script as various plots running in parallel confuse audience. Content wise, Chandan Arora and Siddharth pocketed the right coins but when it comes to narration Director has failed miserably. Role of Padma Priya looked useless and only a patch work. Even though with impeccable star cast, Siddharth alone shined bright whereas others were just okay. All in all, it is a genuine attempt from Chandan Arora, which could have been an excellent entertainer if he has concentrated totally on Caroms.

Cinejosh Verdict of the Movie Striker: Striked hard but too many coins spoiled the game.