give blood

Rating: 8/10 (20 July 2016)

On Meerkat Wednesday I took the jump and watched this film. I was dreading it normally in this town the audiences for films listed as Bollywood they just talk and shout all the way through, only going quite when the songs play. Luckily there was only three people in the screen including me.
The film was a good three hours of Indian film making at its best. The simple script did not rely on an abundance of dance numbers, whistling sound effects and the brain damaged best friend. The juvenile antics of the thirty something Salman Khan chasing fallen kites was a well edited race and gave a good introduction to his love interest Anushka Sharma. The film played like a Rocky film set in the world of wrestling as a series of training scenes and fights followed the growing relationship between the two leads. The cockiness of Salman and the tragedy that befalls him works to a hard hitting end of the first half.
The second half working against this tragedy introduces a new cast and story line to this film and offers plenty of bone crunching fights in the ring. The songs in this film actually work and for a change does not slow down the pacing its almost 3 hour running time. The bright airy world of small town India in the first half contrasts nicely against the dark urban world of Delhi in the second half.
The director/writer Ali Abbas Zafar does a good job and this film easily falls into the top 20 films I've seen this year. Even the credit crawl doesn't waste time it fills the viewer in on the near future for the main characters.