~Sushant's Bollywood Debut~ #7 (Page 43)

'Kai Po Che': Assured and Accomplished

When it was first published in 2008, Chetan Bhagat's 'The 3 Mistakes of My Life' followed a familiar pattern for the best-selling author; the book was critically panned despite selling by the truckload.

A common thread in the negative reviews was the fact that Bhagat had, perhaps as a way of being taken seriously by critics, crammed every socio-economic and political malaise imaginable into his tale about three aspirational friends in the vibrant new, 21^st century India.

From young love and the cynicism that underpins the Hindu-Muslim relationship through cricket and natural disaster, '3 Mistakes' had everything, drenched in Bollywood-esque melodrama, making for an often-incoherent read.

Actor-turned-director Abhishek Kapoor's ('Aryan') film adaptation, surprisingly, doesn't suffer from the same problem.

The year is 2000.  The new millennium has brought a wave of economic prosperity to India.  

People are hopeful of the future, no more so than Govind (Rajkumar Yadav), Ishaan (Sushat Singh Rajput) and Omi (Amit Sadh); three friends who share a common ambition for fame and fortune despite their utterly disparate personalities and modi operandi.

With the help of some unaccounted-for cash from Omi's politician-uncle 'Bittu Mama' (the outstandingly treacherous Manav Kaul) the three friends set up a cricket academy inside a Hindu temple complex.

Even as the friends become preoccupied with their individual destinies – Govind falls for Ishaan's maths-challenged little sister, Omi repays his uncle's generosity by entering politics and Ishaan takes on a pet project in the form of a talented young cricketer called Ali – the aptly-named Sabarmati Sports Academy goes from strength to strength with a gleaming new shop at a gleaming new shopping mall.  

The build up to this point is slightly labored as Kapoor lays the groundwork for this multi-faceted story with only picturesque Gujarat, Amit Trivedi's evocative score and Sushat Singh Rajput's chiseled torso keeping the audience company.

Up until the intermission, the film is fairly run-of-the-mill.  

In the second-half however, things explode on the screen; literally and metaphorically, as the devastating Gujarat earthquake of 2001 hits the friends' dreams as it takes the lives of 20,000 people.

Just as the rubble is cleared away, a massacre of Hindu pilgrims on a train from Ayodhya plunges the state where Mahatma Gandhi was born into a bloody cycle of violence.  

Kapoor depicts the violence and the underlying cynicism extremely well, with sensitivity but without pulling any punches with a climax that expertly portrays the individual impact on the friends of the wider communal issue.

Above all, Kapoor manages to deftly weave the multitude of narrative threads without over-taxing the audience.

All three central characters are well cast but it is Ishaan who is at the heart of the story; it is his compulsions that drive the narrative forward and Rajput does an excellent job as the instinctive, impulsive yet principled cricket coach.

Chetan Bhagat's book may have been a bit of a labyrinthine mess but it is to Kapoor's great credit that the film is not.  

The Indian censor board insisted on giving the film a 'Universal' rating, saying it needed to be watched by everyone in India.

In Bollywood's centenary year, the board's finally got something right.