Bhaag Milkha Bhaag

Milkha Singh saw his family killed during the partition of 1947 and crossed into India alone. He enlisted in the army, started running there and soon became the fastest man in the country. At the Rome Olympics in 1960 he missed a medal in the four hundred metres final. The film builds his life as the time before and after that race. The subject is not sport but a man running to get away from his past. The most important scene is not a race; it is the passage in which he refuses to go to Pakistan and why. The trauma of partition sits at the centre and victory does not heal it. The form is large in scale and long. Training sequences, songs and flashbacks follow one another; it runs past three hours and the middle repeats itself. The most notable detail is the sale of the rights. Milkha Singh had been offered many millions of rupees for his life story; he refused all of it, gave the rights for one rupee, and had a clause added directing a share of the profits to the sports foundation he had established. Farhan Akhtar went through long athletic training for the role and performed the running himself. Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra directs, with Sonam Kapoor and Divya Dutta in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like sports biography from real events and popular Indian cinema. Who it is not for: anyone with no patience for length; the film is long and presses its emotional buttons often.