MS DHONI BEST CAPTAIN

Neeraj Pandey's M S Dhoni - The Untold Story is a highly unusual enterprise. Never before in the history of cinema has a biopic of an active sportsman been mounted with quite this level of approval from the subject himself.

This embarrassed puff-job has been bankrolled by Dhoni's long-time confidant and business partner Arun Pandey and personally greenlighted by the cricketer.

Objectivity it isn't, therefore, the film's strong suit. So what remains untold inevitably puts what is told in the shade. 

The director's hands are forced. He adopts a tame, sterile, straitjacketed approach to the story, depriving M S Dhoni - The Untold Story of genuine purchase.

This is a listless cricket drama more intent on airbrushing the protagonist than on presenting a rounded, hard-nosed, neutral cinematic sketch of the man and the athlete.

It is too starchy and defferential to be anything more than an effete paean to the life and times of India's most successful cricket captain.

With the director's focus firmly this film is, in the end, only a fanboy account of the journey of a Ranchi lad who went from the anonymity of being a railway ticket collector in Kharagpur to becoming one of the brightest-ever stars of Indian cricket.  If you are a diehard fan of MS Dhoni and cricket (in that order), you are bound to love this film, which reveres its protagonist. Despite the glorification, what works is Sushant’s impeccable portrayal of a stoic Dhoni and the latter’s inspiring untold story - his journey from being a ticket collector to a renowned attacking batsman/wicket-keeper/captain.

While the director does a good job of capturing the small-town middle class milieu of Dhoni's upbringing, he is unable to dispel the sense  and admiration that hangs over the narrative.  

Dhoni's success story simply isn't as full of drama as the makers of this film think it is. Indian sport has witnessed far more dramatic real-life rags-to-riches stories.

When the film gets to the business end post-interval and dramatizes the big moments of Dhoni's career, it turns into a never-ending highlights package, the kind that sports channels run on a loop. Ravi Shastri's shrill, over-excited voice on the soundtrack only strengthens that impression. M S Dhoni - The Untold Story, cinema's equivalent of vanity publishing, tom-toms Dhoni's achievements in life and in the game and recaps Indian cricket's recent history with the wicket keeper-batsman occupying the prime position. Neither makes for particularly memorable cinema moments.

These are anyways too fresh in the public memory to bear repetition, even in widescreen, colour-spangled glory.

Watching M S Dhoni - The Untold Story is like being subjected to two films - that is the kind of strain it inflicts.

The time that it takes to play out - 190 minutes - is roughly the playing hours of a Twenty20 match. The latter is pure slam-bang. Dhoni's life on the big screen is a long, tiring ambulation through boredom.

The film plays out less like an engaging life story than an in-your-face big-screen advertorial.

Only the very gullible or the very generous would be inclined to take M S Dhoni - The Untold Story as anything more than an image management company's attempt to bolster and extend the power of a lucrative brand that is nearing the end of its currency.

All this would have been passable had large swathes of it not been so uninteresting and fawningly laudatory. Short of actually conjuring up a halo around Dhoni's head, the film does just about everything.

It stretches from his early successes at the school and domestic level to his international breakthrough to his T20 and ODI World Cup-winning feats.

Off the field, the Dhoni story per se is unremarkable, hardly any different from the trajectories of many other Indian cricketers of the past and present who emerged from modest backgrounds.

Instead of delving into the complexities of an international sporting career with its share of controversy, the patchy script glosses over the grey areas and concentrates squarely on lionizing Dhoni as a model sportsman
The biopic on India’s celebrated skipper, MS Dhoni (played by Sushant Singh Rajput) is the cricketer’s ode to his well-wishers, friends and family, who stood by him at all times - in success and failure. Their immense contribution in fulfilling his dream, his faith in himself and ability to battle professional and personal setbacks, forms the story.

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