An inspiring movie on one of India's greatest athletes

Rating: 8/10 (15 July 2013)

I would like to sum up my biggest takeaways after watching this movie with these lines 'If today's youth take a leaf out of Milkha's life then India can not only produce a great Olympian athlete but in fact produce an assembly line of Olympian athletes'
This movie although a biopic is very larger than life and the scriptwriter Prasoon Joshi has made it clear in his interview that they didn't intend to make a verbatim documentary on Milkha's life; but instead use events in his life to show how a young boy who saw his family being massacred in front of his eyes transform himself to become a world-class athlete. In that respect, the movie scores highly according to me.
This movie belongs to Farhan Akhtar. The physical resemblance to the athlete is striking and the tremendous effort he has put to showcase Milkha's life is to be seen to be believed. Pawan Malhotra as Milkha's first coach has delivered a fabulous performance. Sonam Kapoor features in an extended cameo as Milkha's first love and has pretty much nothing to do in the film. The music is another plus for this film. It is racy, peppy and provides a good support to the film.
I think this movie could have been much better with some crisp editing and better direction in some parts. Rakesh Mehra has tried too hard to make this movie appeal to the critics as well as the masses. Also there is a heavy influence of Rang De Basanti. The juxtaposition of the past and present is something that he uses a bit too much and it looks forced to be honest. Also in his endeavor to make the movie larger than life he adds too many cinematic elements in some scenes; in other words makes it filmy rather than being realistic. A couple of examples 'The scene where Milkha cuts the TTE's hand with a knife; another is the all important Rome Olympics scene where it is shown that Milkha imagines a horseman running after him (this is the childhood scene when his family is massacred). All these could have been avoided.
One major glitch I feel in the movie is the physical frame of Farhan. He looks more like a body-builder with his six pack abs and well built pecs rather than an athlete. This is again an attempt to appease the masses. If you see Milkha Singh's photos, you can easily see that he had a lean frame. Also an athlete's built is completely different to a body builder. Alas the director has missed this point completely. Also I felt the love story of Farhan and Sonam was extended too much and drags on a bit.
Inspite of the all these shortcomings, I highly recommend watching this movie for two reasons firstly the story of Milkha Singh is by itself a truly inspirational one and secondly for the performance of Farhan. While this movie cannot be compared to Paan Singh Tomar, which I consider as the best biopic movie ever, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is definitely worth watching once....