Champion (2000)
Starring: Sunny Deol. Manisha Koirala, Rahul Dev
Director: Padam Kumar
Music Director: Anu Malik
Synopsis: The Deol Dhamaka turns into a shambolic disaster
Reviewed by: Faiz Khan

 

Sunny Deol had been absent from our screens for quite some time. It appears that the failure of his own production, Dillagi, affected him rather badly and he chose to keep a low profile for a while. It is therefore something of a shame that, having finally resurfaced, he should return in something as lamentable as this.

The film opens with a mysterious figure silhouetted against a dark orange sky. As the opening titles roll, we watch him tampering with the controls of an aircraft. Cut to Raja Sahab (Deepak Parashar), a turquoise-eyed industrialist, boarding a flight to Delhi with his wife. Their young son, Abbas, refuses to accompany them and stays behind with family friend "Chief" (Manisha Koirala).

Surprise, surprise...

...the aircraft crashes.

Abbas's parents are killed.

Six months later, Abbas has somehow recovered from the trauma of losing both parents and is suddenly deemed to be in need of a bodyguard, although I am not entirely sure why this decision is made at precisely this point.

The chosen protector is Rajveer (Sunny Deol), an earnest police officer from Patiala who dreams of earning medals in Mumbai. In his very first scene we watch him arrive by helicopter, leap from it, gun down assorted villains, dodge rocket attacks and somersault his way into instant heroism.

Sadly...

...it's all a dream.

Only twenty-five minutes had elapsed and I rather wished I had been dreaming too.

Rajveer accepts the task of protecting Abbas and we are then subjected to another forty minutes of insufferable comedy involving assorted children behaving in a thoroughly demented fashion. Joining in the madness is Sapna (Manisha Koirala), a regular visitor to the house and, naturally, after the obligatory song-and-dance routines—staged with precious little imagination—love blossoms.

Once all this padding has finally been dispensed with, the film reluctantly returns to its central mystery.

Why is someone trying to kill Abbas?

The answer arrives when the action shifts to a mental asylum, where inmate Nazeer (Rahul Dev) recounts his story.

Cue another flashback and yet another appearance from the turquoise-eyed Raja Sahab, who discovers that one of his employees has been using the factory to channel funds towards terrorist activities. Overcome with shame, the employee murders his own family before killing himself. Nazeer survives but loses his sanity.

Or so we are led to believe.

As it turns out, he has recovered perfectly well but simply continues living in the asylum, bribing the staff and using the institution as a convenient headquarters from which to pursue his villainous activities.

His life's ambition?

To murder young Abbas, having already disposed of the boy's parents.

The question, of course, is whether he succeeds...

...or whether our gallant Patiala policeman saves the day.

Can I really ask that question with a straight face?

This is a disaster of gigantic proportions, possessing not a single redeeming feature beyond Rahul Dev who, in his debut film, gives a reasonably competent performance.

Sunny Deol faces something of a dilemma. He appears convinced that audiences no longer wish to see him in romantic roles and will only accept him as an action hero. That conclusion seems to have been reached after Dillagi failed while many of his biggest successes happened to be action films.

But Dillagi simply wasn't a very good film.

That's why it failed.

And what about Zor? That flopped too—and it was an action film.

Then there was Darr, a huge success in which he played a romantic role.

So where exactly does that leave him?

Sadly, it leaves him here.

This is an embarrassment for Sunny and he responds with one of the weaker performances of his career. He is a talented and naturally likeable actor and deserves considerably better material than this. One cannot help wondering what Manisha Koirala is doing in such a film, the only plausible explanation being the pay cheque. Fair enough—but very little effort seems to have gone into the performance itself. More attention appears to have been devoted to the make-up and hairstyles than to the character.

In a word...

...she is awful.

Watching Sunny and Manisha dance together is almost as painful as sitting through the film itself. Unfortunately they are required to do so rather frequently, all to a disappointingly ordinary score by Anu Malik. The background music is equally dreadful—loud, bombastic and relentlessly overexcited.

The cinematography, however, is surprisingly impressive.

The child actor possesses almost no charm whatsoever and quickly becomes an irritation simply by appearing on screen. I was, however, genuinely delighted to see Deepak Parashar back on the big screen once again. Quite possibly the least accomplished leading man in the history of Hindi cinema, his brief appearance here will nevertheless warm the hearts of those who have missed witnessing his unique brand of artistry.

And those wonderfully coloured eyes remain intact.

This marks Padam Kumar's first Hindi feature and his direction is stodgy, unimaginative and entirely lacking in freshness. There is not the slightest trace of suspense throughout and at no point do you seriously believe the boy is in any real danger. The story is cliched, hopelessly implausible and eventually descends into the usual nonsense involving face masks masquerading as realism.

Grow up, gentlemen.

Who still wants to watch this sort of trash?

One to avoid.