Mary Kom

A girl walks into a gym in Manipur and says she wants to box. The coach laughs. When her father hears he objects; nobody in the family would accept it and she is expected to marry. Mary leaves home. She trains for years, wins medals and makes her name known in the country. Then she marries and has two children. The federation does not want her back; a woman is counted finished once she is a mother. Mary wants to return. One of her children falls ill, and the world championship is in the same period. Omung Kumar directs. Priyanka Chopra Jonas plays Mary; Darshan Kumaar and Sunil Thapa are in the cast. The language is Hindi. Its ground is real; Mary Kom is among India's best known boxers and won her world titles coming out of Manipur. The film was criticised for casting Priyanka Chopra; Mary Kom is from northeastern India and the failure to cast an actor from the region was argued over. The matter it treats is institutional obstruction; the real opponent is not in the ring but in the federation. The narrative follows the shape of the sports film and the bouts run to type. The film passes quickly over the political situation in Manipur and uses the region as background. Chopra trained for a long period for the part and did the fighting herself. The narrative takes the strain between motherhood and a career as a direct subject. Its limit is method; the narrative is conventional, the emotional steering high, and the ending where expected. Who it is for: viewers who like Indian cinema and sports biographies. Who it is not for: it is conventional, predictable, and the ending a celebration.