In the recent past, the Hindi film industry has churned out a large number of biopics. If you look closely, many of the biopics made in India have revolved around sports personalities. A few of such films are ‘Chak De! India’, ‘M.S Dhoni The Untold Story’ and ‘Dangal’. ‘Gold’, a film which traces the journey of Tapan Das, team manager of the Indian Hockey Team, is inspired from a real-life incident. Reema Kagti, who has earlier worked on diverse films like ‘Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd’ and ‘Talaash’ has co-written and directed the film.
Tapan Das (Akshay Kumar) is the junior manager of the British Indian hockey team that wins a gold medal in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Though he is happy about the team’s win, the one thing that pinches him is the fact that India continues to be ruled by Britishers and wishes that the hockey team should get the gold for free India one day. Because of World War –II, the Olympic events are cancelled in 1940 and 1944. Around 1947, the news about India getting independence starts spreading around. Tapan gets very excited at hearing the news and feels the next Olympics event, scheduled to be held in 11948, could help free India get its first gold. He decides to put together a team comprising of the best hockey players in the country and take them to Olympics.
When you set a film in a bygone era, you have to be extremely careful about the way you show the milieu and other cultural and geographical references. In ‘Gold’, apart from Akshay Kumar’s muddled, synthetic Bengali accent, everything seems authentic. The production design, references to some key events which happened during that period – everything comes together wonderfully in this film. The authentic milieu is one of the reasons why it is easier for one to connect to the narrative of the film. The film is consistently engaging but does not offer too many memorable moments. There is a scene in which Samrat (Kunaal Kapoor) asks the players to pick up bricks from one place to another to make them understand the importance of planning and team work. In another scene, a monk, who is a hockey aficionado and has been observing silence for five years, breaks it as soon as he hears about Samrat visiting the monastery. These are some of the scenes that stay with you.
As stated earlier, Akshay Kumar’s Bengali accent sounds caricaturish. His performance is fairly good. Amit Sadh looks very believable as the aristocratic Raghubir Pratap Singh. Though Vineet Kumar Singh has limited presence in the second half, he gets a very good track for himself which enables him to bring his acting prowess to the forefront. Kunal Kapoor delivers a wonderfully restrained performance as Samrat. Sunny Kaushal, who was brilliant in the web-series ‘Official Chukyagiri’, makes a very confident film debut. There are two only two prominent female characters in the film. Out of the two, it is Nikita Dutta who makes the most lasting impression. The actress, who has several TV shows to her credit and made an appearance in the Netflix film ‘Lust Stories’ earlier this year, does not have too many scenes but leaves a strong impression as Simran. Mouni Roy, in her film debut, delivers a reasonably fair performance within the limited scope she gets.
Watching ‘Gold’ felt more like witnessing a period drama rather than a sports film. The film has certain blemishes but makes for a fairly engaging watch. A film of this nature requires a strong climax to hold things together and thankfully, ‘Gold’ has one.